#also used to do my friend's insulin shots a while ago and it was never so bad

[sapphiroth]

my wife just injected me full of boy juice 😖

[fxandchill]

Hey, how's Lily doing? I remember I read a post you made about she being sick, and I forgot to ask if she's better now

OH MY GOSH thank you for asking! I was bad with updating because she’s had so many vet visits these past two months and I had to give all my friends and family updates I forgot to write anything here, but she is doing great!! This might be long because I’m just gonna put the full story for anyone who doesn’t know, my cat has been going through a lot. This is like, the short version too opps. 

So late May/early June she had bad anemia and our regular vet couldn’t treat it so we took her to a specialist and they tried giving her a blood transfusion (her red blood cell count was so low and she was completely lethargic it was scary) but her blood was having a reaction to the donor’s and it wasn’t going to work. They told us her immune system was shutting down, they found a lump in her pancreas, and she was diagnosed with this rare thing called EPI. 

They gave her fluids and put her on several different medicines, the lump was luckily just an abscess so she had antibiotics for it, she’s diabetic so she’s on insulin but she’s also on steroids for the anemia which might effect her insulin but she has an appointment Aug 18th to check (they might have to up her dose of insulin but only while she’s on the steroids), she had to take appetite stimulants and pain meds because she wouldn’t eat but she’s eating now like she used to so she’s not on those two anymore, she has this powder we have to mix into her food for her EPI, and once a week she gets b12 vitamin as a shot. When she goes into the vet we gave her this medicine to calm her but now she’s used to going so we stopped. She has had several appointments over the past two months checking on her and running a bunch of tests and basically her problems were the abscess, EPI, anemia, and diabetes. We found no cancer so THANK CAT GOD. Now that we know what she has and the cause of it and she’s on medicines, she started feeling better. Now she goes in just for check ups and its all been good news.

A month ago, like mid July, she went in for a check up and her pancreas lump was gone thanks to the antibiotics but we kept her on them just in case it was too small to see. She got another check up last week and they are sure it’s gone and gave the okay to stop giving her antibiotics! And they did a blood test on her and a couple days after her appointment the test results say her anemia is much better so they want to lower the dose of her steroids slowly over time until she doesn’t need them anymore!! I think because she’s feeling better her immune system isn’t freaking the freak out anymore...idk only time will tell..

She will never be “fully cured” theres no cure for diabetes and EPI (she’s had diabetes for a year and the specialist told me it might have been caused by the EPI so she might have had that too this whole time and the other vet just didn’t know because it’s so rare) but she’s getting her treatments and her check ups and she’s acting more and more normal every day. The only thing she hates now is the steroids because we have to wrap her up in a blanket and give it to her in her mouth with a syringe but I think she’s going to be off that soon. 

I really appreciate everyone who is keeping Lily in their thoughts she loves you all she told me to tell you “meow” for her 

[mineofilms]

2020… My Life… Everything Else Is Just Blurry…

Where to begin… I have been a type 2 diabetic since 2013. I got diabetes from excessive partying/drinking, originally. I continued to behave like this till June 2020. Granted, I wasn’t going as hard, in general, over the years, but each year and hardship I found myself going back to those old vices more frequently.

When the pandemic struck SWFL my drinking went up about 400%. No joke. I trained 4 days on and drank the other 3 days, hard. I did that from March to late June.

I caught Covid-19 around June 26th. By July 11th I needed to be hospitalized for Diabetic Ketoacidosis (where the body produces excess blood acids; ketones. This occurs when there isn't enough insulin in the body. It can be triggered by infection or other illness.) & Pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas. It happens when digestive enzymes start digesting the pancreas itself.) I was in ICU for 36 hours and in the hospital for 5 days. I lost 21 lbs over that time.

3 days after I got home from the hospital, Macular Edema (blood vessels in the retina burst and bleed into the eyes), set in. That took about a month to heal only for Diabetic Retinopathy (those same blood vessels that burst heal and are inflamed).

Usually requires anti-inflammatory shots into the eye ball and laser surgery to burn away some of the excess scar tissue. These cost thousands of dollars without insurance, which I do not have. I have read that they can heal on their own, but it takes about 8-12 months. I am in month 4.

However, I actually cannot confirm if that statement about them healing on their own is actually true or not. Some notes in journals say yes while other, more creditable sites, say no. One must get treatment.

Now let me be clear that Covid-19 did not cause my Diabetic Ketoacidosis & Pancreatitis. My lack of proper care for my diabetes caused these. I was already in the yellow and when I got Covid-19 it just put me in the RED. I now, at this point, required medical care or I would die. Those are the facts about me getting Covid-19, my Diabetic Ketoacidosis & Pancreatitis…

Flash-Forward to now… I got my blood sugars down to near normal (high) levels. This means my blood sugar is still high, but for me, I used to walk around at 400. 500-600 is diabetic coma. 80-120 is considered normal. I walk around between 130-230, currently, fasted.

I have not had a drink since June 26th. I will never drink again. I can’t.

1) Alcohol has thoroughly ruined my adult life in all sorts of areas besides this. It got me sick to begin with among, other, things.

2) If I drink I could be back in the hospital with Diabetic Ketoacidosis & Pancreatitis, again.

3) I made a deal with GOD. If I have to live through this (I prayed to die that night) that I would never drink again.

What kind of dick lies to GOD lol? A decade ago I would have… I hated everything about the concept of GOD. Now, I have come to terms that if there is or there isn’t; it doesn’t matter. I value me, my beliefs. Why not carry myself with that respect. I do not need to tell or share my beliefs with others. I care not for such things.

I am solely worried about my mental, physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual health.

I did not quit drinking because of addiction issues or any of that business. I made the choice because if I didn’t my pancreas would fail and I would be dead in a few months. That is how bad my pancreas was… I do not see myself as someone that is doing all this for attention. I have barely even made mention of this whole story on my social media. I have told people in direct messages, but I do not post everything that is happening in my life on social media.

Granted this Tumblr account is considered social media, but I do not use it for that purpose. It is strictly for my BLOG entries. I do not follow people on Tumblr. I post, get my URL and share it that way. Its not in your face on Facebook or anything, but one can click the link and go read about the crazy things in my head.

Taking care of my mental, physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual health is a full time job in and of itself. Now, currently I cannot work. I can only drive during the day. I cannot see well enough to drive at night.

I have other medical issues stemming from this and it is quite the laundry list. However, I think I gave you all enough to think about.

I am back in great shape now. Since I quit drinking and got back from the hospital I went from 119 to 163 lbs. I have not been this big since 2012. Right before I believe my Diabetic State started. My strength is coming back with a vengeance too. I am putting up more weight than I have in nearly a decade.

I have had to make serious and big changes to EVERYTHING in my life.

My computer is now changed from dual 22 inch monitors to one 46 inch monitor. I have to make changes like this just to see well enough to do some things on the computer.

I am still very blind. My vision has decent days and some days I cannot see much of anything. I cannot see my phone without a magnifying glass. I just got my eyes looked at several times cause my power keeps shifting and now my current glasses setup does not exactly help much. My computer glasses are ok for this, but my normal bifocals are pretty useless.

However; I do feel like I can write a little bit more now. I have a few blogs I want to write and then go right back into the novel. This might be the only realistic possibility of me being able to work to earn my keep. Normal 9-5, Monday-Friday are out of the question, indefinitely.

Not only am I not well enough for the grind, physically. My mental health is very questionable. I have had issues for years now. I have had about 20 jobs in 15 years. I have done a real number on my mental health over the years. Always trying to do more, work harder than the next person so I can make that “good money” that some always throw in my face. I did the work. I put in the time, but only to be messed with. Yes, I have that sort of mental issue.

One tries to mess with me. Mess with the positive shit I am doing. I lose my head pretty quick. I have repeatedly demonstrated over the course of my life that I have no restraint at all when it comes to that feeling of being seriously fucked with and have them look at you like; “What are you gonna do about it?”

Well that is it… I always do something about it. Even when I know I shouldn’t. It is my worst impulsive trait that I cannot get a handle on. Ever since I was a kid. I wanna say. It started when I was 11 or so.

I have made huge strides in changing my life, my thinking and how I fit into the scheme of things. I have become more an introvert than an extrovert. Even before the pandemic I was going out less and less. Doing things less and less. It got to a point to where I only went out when I could drink and/or the band was playing. I was already becoming less social. So this is nothing overly drastic about that UNLESS you count Facebook activity.

I have not advertised much on my Facebook and for good reasons… I posted about my 6 months of sobriety and the responses I got were all about, pressing on and “the struggle.”

I pulled it down. There was no struggle here. I am not a keep on keepin’ on mannnnnn… Type of Personality… No… I quit drinking so I can live another 10-15, hopefully more, years.  I just went through a friend dying from literally drinking himself to death. I know what people go through with their addiction struggles. I have my own reservations about how I feel about said subject matter.

Needless to say I did not appreciate how people view me on Facebook. I no longer post blogs their either. I post here on tumblr and put a link on my Facebook if anyone wants to read. That is about it.

I know people do not read more than a handful of sentences that ends with a weird hashtag or snapchat handle. I get it. It is also my fault because I have not told the Facebook wall/timeline of my mental and medical conditions and struggles. I reserve those conversations to be personal.

So if you want to know stuff, then let us get personal. Pretty much that simple. I do not do FAKE FRIENDS…

I try to be transparent. In the past it was easy, but now everyone has an opinion that they call facts. I do not know how many people I blocked on Facebook for being so damn ignorant or attention seeking.

I know I do not do attention seeking things. When I write it is with intention to say something. I would say 1600+ words on these subjects merits a little more than “attention seeking” behavior…

Things are looking up. I have done soooooooooo much. With so very little and make it look like I have a lot and that everything is fine. No. God Damnit… Everything is not fine. I am kicking ass trying to make something fine but not everything. Everything will never be FINE… Not ever. However, I can strive for it. I can continue to put in that work and just ignore the dumb shit. Which I am becoming pretty good at. I am still me. I am still blunt. If I rough feathers that is just my way of getting those people away from me.

Goodbye 2020… You will never be forgotten and your mark has definitely been left…

2020… My Life… Everything Else Is Just Blurry… By David-Angelo Mineo Words 1,738  12/30/2020

[th3okamid3monart]

Things I’m going to miss this Holidays

There are a couple of traditions we do in my family that I havent seen in other places and with one search on the internet I realize that most of the things we do are from my own country + some that we make up ourselves. 

So Im going to share them here because... Well, there’s a big-ass chance I wont be able to do them this Christmas nor New years. 

NOTE: When I say ‘my family’ in a lot of this, I mean ALL my family. Which means, all my grandparents, all my aunts, all my uncles, all my cousins, and, yes, EVEN my great grandaparents, cousins, uncles, aunts and more. Because we all know each other and we even make a party once a year for my dad’s side of the family 

Here I go:

Las Posadas

There’s this thing that we do at one of my grandparents’ house that involves singing a carol about the time Maria and Jose were looking for a place to stay to rest before travel far away for the birth of Jesus. It is a song which is singed by 2 groups, one that is inside and the other that’s outside. What we do is the following: One group goes inside a room in the house while the other stays outside the door, the group outside sings one part and the other sings the other. We go back and forward until we finish the song. It is pretty funny because no one sings well and its just like a bunch of grown ups practically screaming but we always end up chuckling. I used to think it was pointless and boring but that was because I was an edgy potato, after I enter University i began to enjoy more things and be happier. This is going to be the second time I wont be with my complete family for Christmas and now its all the family who wont be able to go to my grandparents house for a celebration. 

12 grapes, 12 wishes

In both sides of my family we usually fill up 12 grapes in a cup and give everyone 1 cup each. I dont remember what exactly the grapes meant or the story about the wishes but it’s supposedly like before it strikes 12 am on New Years, we have to eat our grapes while also wishing for something. I remember when I was younger I’d wish for peace on the world or that everything went well for everyone. I think I’m going to buy a bigger bag of grapes this year. 

Something that was funny was that everyone would just... Stuff their mouths with grapes, mostly my cousins and I, just to see how many we could fit. Not everyone wished for many things in the family because I think we all feel we had and have enough. If my family does this again on their own, I’m pretty certain their wishes would be to be able to meet with the family. 

Piñata

Every year since I was little, my grandparents buy a piñata to smash before or during Christmas. They find it such a good activity for cousins and even for my aunts, my mom and uncle. They literally havent stopped buying them, the oldest grandchild in that side of the family its in her 30s, but they still buy a piñata. I think its mostly for the youngest which are below 16, never the less, its still super funny and hilarious because we go from youngest to oldest. By the time it gets to my brother, its still intact, he only swings it once and its completely DESTROYED. We just have a lot of fun, and sometimes we make my mom or my aunts to hit it. My mom wasnt as cheery when I was a kid, but now she laughs more and when it comes to the piñata she laughs and enjoys her time even more. 

Games 

Like any gathering, all cousins bring up something we can do to entertain ourselves. At first they were toys my grandparents had for us, then it was videogames and now... Its board games. My bro is the one obsess with different boardgames and DnD and other card games. So, about 5 years ago he began bringing boardgames for all cousins to play along. We either talk with each other or try to destroy each other with any game there is. Videogames are fun but we all find it a drag to bring the console to the place, besides we usually get so busy with each others banter and weird conversations that we just forget about the videogames all together. 

At my other grandparents house it becomes W I L D. Last time someone brough a beer pong table and they all began to take shots with mezcal (I’m trying to not drink a lot of the time ever since I puked one time. If I drink its light things like wine and only one glass). Then my aunts play music and began to sing and everyone follows up, and... Well last time they began to dance.... And all my cousins were very embarassed and I was hella confused. Suffice to say, my dad’s side of the family are super freakishly energetic and wild, while my mom’s side is more of a geeky, nerdy vibe with a lot of meme stuff and political conversations at times (Oh yeah, we talk a lot of different political stuff, but guess what? It never derails into a fight. I note this due to always reading people’s talks ending with fights and stuff and that kinda weirds me out a bit at times) 

Dinners 

I don’t remember the time exactly, probably since I was 15 maybe, my dad and I turned into the designated ‘chefs’. Every year we’ve been deciding and preparing foods for each house. We make the main course while my aunts do the sides (although sometimes it becomes like 3 main courses with 2 sides). Im waaaaaaaaay into the cooking and I try to make it perfect each year. I kinda chillaxed a bit with some foods because it wasnt that big of a deal. Besides the main course, I also decide to make a dessert and sometimes they arent eaten because my families have some sugar regulations. They are stored and kept after Christmas because thats better than eating it all in one sitting and having sugar poisoning (AKA, high sugar that needs a fast Insuline injection afterwards). 

It is always fun to make food with my dad, and to make the famous Tamales from my grandma’s recipe. Last time i think we made around 400? Between green salsa chicken, red salsa beef and pork, and some that were like... its like an adobe, its with achiote and orange juice. It was very tasty. We usually make a lot and freeze them. THEY ARENT COOKED, they are raw and then frozen. Every time we take some out, we make them with vapor, takes around 2 hours and they are always tasty. I remember I made a batch all by myself, I made the feelings, I mixed the masa, and I assemble 100 by my own, the rest was thankfully made by my parents. And it was the best when I gave some to my grandma and she told me that they were super good. Of course, I made a couple mistakes, Im not perfect but she still enjoyed it with the salsa I made. Maybe I can still make some this year and give each family a batch. 

Aunt’s cookies

Every year, every god damn year... We all wait for one thing... It’s not the presents, its not the food... Its the cookies. The motherfucking cookies. My aunt has made this cookies since I was a kid, and we all fought to get a bunch of them. She has made choco chip with nuts cookies every year without missing. And they always end before Christmas even hits. She once gave me frozen batch so I can cook them at home and she told me ‘Dont tell anybody’. Of course I cannot not tell anyone since I live with my parents and siblings but when I made them I made sure to make them when my dad wasnt home. Not only because Im a gluttonous fuck but because my dad is diabetic and he shouldnt be eating anything like that. 

It used to be a battle royal between my cousins, now its a battle against my uncles cause they LOVE TO FUCKING HIDE THE BIG ASS CONTAINER. I swear, i only got 1 or 2 god damn cookies last time. 

Breakfast at...Lunch at...

After Christmas, we always go eat at my grandparents house. Always. And it’s, most of the time, Menudo. The most delicious food you can make with cow stomach. It’s my grandpa’s recipe and it’s always good. Meanwhile, we lunch at my grandma’s house the leftovers of yesterdays dinner which it varies if its turkey or pork but it always ends up as a torta. Delicious, leftover, tortas. 

We end up... SUPER CONSTIPATED because you eat menudo with bread, and you make tortas with bread, and we all eat bread and like... A LOT. Its hella good but well... THERE ARE CONCEQUENCES!! 

I think thats all, at least the most relevant parts. There’s also The Toast of El Bohemio, the stupidity and over eating i do for fun for some cousins, the conversations that go from super deep to stupidity with cousins, the music we play, the hugs... 

THE HUGS

When its the New Year, we scream out HAPPY NEW YEAR. And we proceed to hug each and everyone, one time I waited to see everyone and they all were very very happy. Its something I didnt realize before, but that was a happy thing all the time. Last year we event celebrated with other family, most of this reunions are compose with the nuclear family, but we arent shy about involving more family or friends. So last year not only included some family and their friends, we also included a 2 new members of the family: My newborn cousin and my cousin’s now husband. 

It was like.. One of the best beginnings... Which kind of... didnt prepared us for what this...sucky year. 

I’m sure we’ll make it ok... I sure hope so, I wanna see my grandparents again... I wanna see my baby cousin, he is babbling and has already learned to walk. The little dude doesnt have cousins to play with anymore, I wanna make sure he doesnt confuse me by his aunt ajjajajaja. I want to talk to my cousins, I want to hug them and scream with them and eat with them all. 

But maybe this year it wont happen, and I rather it not happening than loosing any of them. 

Right now I cant smell, and everything hurts, but it kinda helps ease things when i remember this and when I think they all are still kinda healthy. 

Maybe when it all passes we can make a march reunion, to celebrate my grandma’s birthday. In the meantime, I’m going to try to get better and wish for this Christmas to not suck now that It’s only my main family and I. 

Hope everyone is safe, I hope you can at least see your parents or siblings. I hope you dont get sick nor have to spend time at a hospital or anything. I hope all who are, get help and dont get worse. I hope you all get better. 

Hope you have Happy Holidays. 

[whimsically-ominously-auspice]

He makes me livid! I get so mad!!! I don't understand him at all. He makes me go UGH but in bad ways.

I went off on him first before I realised what his problem was... Like total accusations and misfit drama. All paranoid loca. I don't give a shit.

I draw conclusions and those were the most obvious.

But when you know someone... You have to remember their stupidity. One time he confessed... And I already had decided to break up with him... I was all I'm waiting till his dad dies then I'm done. He's a good friend when he tries but he doesn't make me,a priority. And so I hadn't told him. I just tired of him,upsetting me so I had to remove me.

So he said he wouldn't do anything for his pain,then, he would take 2x his Percocet with 5 shots of tequila then treat me like shit.

I really hadnt noticed. I was all "oh he's just in his mood where he's decided I'm not important to him"

And true enough when he told me his dad died I walked away from our relationship.

But honestly ... Years later... I missed him.. Because he treated me best. Because I say I walked

I mean I left, completely.

But despite his faults he's always treated me best. I mean person to person. He didn't give me what I wanted from,the relationship. But as a low key friend, he understood me the most

He understood i was scared to go to sleep and he would stay on the phone and help,me,sleep so I could. No one else can do that. My daughter, if she was sleeping with me. I could listen to her breathe and I could fall asleep that way. Because it would calm my r breathing if she was sleeping that calm sleep,breath

But he knew all what to say. And I never had to tell him or even tell him I was afraid to sleep or even admit it to myself.

I hope this helps some of y'all that are anti medicine as well.

I don't like hospitals or doctors (I like my personal doctors But aside from them) in general. I'm afraid of them. They make me hostile. I feel like theyre some dangerous S&M dungeon

Go and wait for hours to get bad news then they don't give you what you need because you're so fucking exhausted they don't understand. Or don't care or are the ones that like to kill patients.

So I like my doctors although I have to wait for hours to see them past my appointment time, they take extra time to see me and cover what I think I need. Their quality is worth the wait. I have 3. Primary, Pain and Urgent Care. And I use the computer urgent care where I leave an online message after finishing a long ass quizz through the insurance website.

And whatever pills they give me, I Google to make sure they were right. They always are. Im also interested in what else the pills cover. Like i take 2 different anti seizure pills for pain and one also for insulin sensitivity increase and metabolic increase. And i take an antidepressant that also covers fibromyalgia.

I have 13 prescriptions. Monthly. Some I have to take more than once per day. Plus i take vitamins.

Then I Google the pharmacy pills to make sure the pharmacy was right.

So.

I get it. Sometimes I don't want to take 13 prescriptions more than once per day or even at all.

But we need to know what we are taking and why.

And why it is important.

And we need to take our medicine. So we can survive

I think this information is especially important during this epidemic.

Now realize that antibiotics are not useful on viruses unless the virus causes a bacterial infection. Like.

A cold is a virus but in some people like myself and used to in my daughter, causes a severe sinus infection which requires antibiotics.

I know the point at which we need antibiotics and so i go to my urgent care lady because she understands and we just do a walk in. And i don't overwhelm my doctor who is taking time to give quality care and has long waiting patients.

But otherwise a virus does not respond to antibiotics. And anti-virus medications are quite rare.

Flu shot... But not a cold shot..

So we take over the counter medicine for our symptoms. Like coughing and runny nose

Sinus pressure in the eyes, nose, teeth. Jaw.

If you have a tooth ache you can take sinus medicine. Because the worst tooth pain is actually in your sinus cavity! That's a secret trick. Works every time.

So basically anytime you have facial pain that doesn't respond to Tylenol or ibuprofen or alieve, you can take sinus medicine. Also ear pain.

Google sinus cavities in the face and you'll see why.

Now an ear and sinus infection is a bacteria, usually but usually our bodies can fight it Well without an anti biotic. As long as it is treated with over the counter medicine. But sometimes, like with myself and my daughter, sometimes an antibiotic is needed..but that is after at least a week to 10 days of serious green overflow that doesn't respond to over the counter medicine.

Sometimes the bacteria is lab revealed by terrorists during the "flu and cold season" to create an income for pharmaceutical companies. For my daughter and i, they're usually too strong for our immune system.

Although since my ex husband left town, my daughter's immune system has significantly became stronger. While mine has not. So she needs less antibiotics, than I do.

Otherwise, my body can fight it on its own with a few doses of otc.

I had a tooth pulled a few years ago.. It created a pathway to my sinuses. I could rinse water in my mouth and it would come out my nose. I saw an ear, nose and throat specialist whom said i needed surgery immediately to repair my nose.

I said no thank you mother fucker

I had to have clearance from my cardiologist. So i took a stress test and failed. So i had to have an ultra sound. It wasn't good. But they said I could have the surgery since it was simple.

I said that's cool, but I don't want to.

I haven't done it. So I get sinus infection and pain quite often. My bone structure in my nose is center in my right nostril. Meaning it's really fucking bad

From being punched in the face a lot. The surgery sounds fucking horrible. And it's a cosmetic change.

I'm all nope. I'm a single mom. She don't take good care of me. I'll drown in the blood sliding down the back of my throat.

The tooth removal was so bad... It was horrible. There was blood every where for days... I can only imagine the nose surgery would be the same

I also hate the smell of blood. So I'm like no. It sounds like the most miserable thing.

If I had someone to take care of me and baby me like a little blood soaked lamb in need of care... That's s different story.. But I don't have anyone that would take care of me

After my tooth... I was throwing up the blood and my kid just stood there and stared,. Which I wanted to hide it from her I was sick... But I was in the kitchen and began violently puking in the trash can... Scared her to death

"Mom I'm scared"

"I am, too. This has never happened before"

So yeah fuck that nose. I got one crooked fucking nose. And it makes me sick.

She wants me to have surgery so I'll quit snoring.

Well.

Ear plugs are at the Dollar Tree, babe.

So y'all take your pills that you need

Some one cares about you

And they don't want to slap your face off. But you'll drive them to it. And a crooked nose isnt all its cracked up to Be. It pretty much sucks.

I can't even blow it Like a normal person....

[highabovethewholescene]

THIS is what being a Swiftie is all about:

A short story + a new pay it forward opportunity

I’d like to start this short story by introducing you to your fellow Swiftie, @swift-reputaytion13. Her name is Jen Jiang. (See her beautiful face in the picture on the left.) Jen and I met very recently on THE SWIFT LIFE group on Facebook.

If you missed my Tumblr post a few weeks ago, I was going through a ROUGH time, financially. ALL IN ONE WEEK... my cat got diagnosed with diabetes (I now have to shoot him up with insulin 2x a day), my dog split gashed her paw completely open (the vet also thought she had gastrointestinal bleeding), and my air conditioning unit went out on my house. The AC guy told me I’d not only have to replace parts... but the entire unit outside AND all of the duct work or whatever inside. He said it would be a minimum of $10,000. I would never be able to afford that... and my babies were sitting in miserable heat while at the sickest they’ve ever been.

At this point, I turned to my @taylorswift groups to cheer me up. You guys always fill me with so much positivity. I didn’t post about my issues in the FB group... but I came across Jen’s post saying she’d like to help out a Swiftie who couldn’t afford a deluxe version. I jumped at the opportunity because, at the time, Taylor had just announced the diary entries and I was heartbroken thinking I couldn’t get one. Jen quickly agreed, got my address and bought me version 4 right away.

Then... the coolest thing happened. Jen and I started chatting and becoming friends. We decided to get different deluxe versions, read them, and then mail them to each other and trade. She had version 3. Jen posted this idea in the group and a couple other Swifties joined in... we now have a “sisterhood of the traveling deluxe editions�� type thing going on. It’s beautiful.

Then Jen helped me again by sending me screen shots from her Tumblr that I could use in my “Taylor Swift breaking news” video that I edited last week (picture on the right). I asked so many people on Tumblr and Facebook to send me stuff (like screenshots or videos of them singing in the car) to use in that video... and she’s the only one who helped me out.

Fast forward to today... my dog does not have gastrointestinal bleeding, she was just licking the blood from her gash. My cat still needs insulin, but he’s gotten better with the needle. So have I. And finally, my home warranty came through and fixed my AC. Meaning I didn’t have to pay for repairs. Everything is fixed now and back to normal. I am so blessed that it all worked out. And while I’m certainly not ahead on bills, I’m not behind anymore.

So now... I’d like to pay it forward. Jen bought me a deluxe edition. I’d like to do the same for one of you in Jen’s name in order to pass along the kindness that Jen showed me during a very tough week. I will buy you whichever version you’d like, and if you want... you can be a part of our “sisterhood of the traveling deluxe editions!”

Please reblog this post so I can find the dedicated Swiftie who wouldn’t be able to get a deluxe version on their own.

Thank you so much, Jen, for reminding me what being a Swiftie is all about. It’s not just about @taylorswift . It’s about all of us. We all came together because her music speaks to us, and we continue to support each other, become close friends and share our fears together. And when one of us might not get to own a copy of a TS album, we help each other out, lift each other up and share the music that brought us all together in the first place. This community is so beautiful. I will never be ashamed to call myself a Swiftie for the rest of my life. Not just because of Taylor... but for all of the friends I made along the way supporting her.

SWIFTIE FOR LIFE!!

[k1ngtok1]

This is my story, made into Leo’s:

This story is based on what I went through becoming a T1D. I was diagnosed sometime between June 22 and 23, 2018. I didn’t have people to help me until it was very late in the day, when my doctor father decided that enimas and constipation medicine were not helping. During the day, the only people that took notice of me were my stepmom, who cooked and gave me water when I asked, and my sister, who only helped because you can’t play Minecraft with someone dying of dehydration in the background. In the story, Piper is taking the place of my mom once they get to the infirmary, and Jason is my dad the whole story. (I didn’t include Calypso for some reason).The stuffed animals are all real (franks present isn’t). They came from my grandparents, sister, moms ex boyfriend, and my 4th grade teacher. The teddy bear was my dads. Friends would visit, my grandpas girlfriend would wheel me around the hospital. A friend, not a close one, watched me cry while getting a shot. The whole experience is jumbled and blurry, everything is out of order. We go to the meeting then home where I stay until the next day, where I feel pressured enough by my diabetic step-grandpa to give my own shot, my friends come over and swim.The End. I didn’t get as much support as Leo did in this, I’m always the one comforting and not getting comforted. I felt a little alone and abandoned, still do. I rediscovered this series in the middle of the school year, and instantly I felt a connection to Leo. He looks like me if he was a girl and had strait hair. I have the same ADHD, the same urge to create, to help others, and now, we both have a bad past, and it stays with us in some way. His flame and my condition. He is the only one that I know that has suffered like I have. I buried myself in stories about this person like me, and I felt like there was someone who understood me. Someone pushed away by others. Who is happy on the outside but not that much inside. Someone who even in a group of accepting friends, feels like they are the outsider, like they aren’t good enough. I found myself in Leo (plus my best friend is a Leo clone with glasses). I wanted to tell my story, so I did it using the story character that was in the same boat as me. I wanted to explain what it really feels like to be burdened, by both yours and other’s problems. So here’s my story, molded into Leo’s.

When Leo woke up, he knew something was seriously wrong with him. His throte was dry as a bone. His stomach felt like Godzilla and the kraken were having a wrestling match. He tried to move but found he didn’t have the energy to. He curled into a little ball and let out a pained moan. 

 “Buford” he called out in a weak voice. The table immediately scuttled over to see what was wrong with his friend.

 “Please, bring me water, and Pipes” he choked out, before promptly dozing off.  

Buford obediently hurried along the path to camp. He was worried Leo had worked himself too hard. He found Piper sitting with Jason, having lunch. If Leo had slept this long, there must have been something wrong with him, as he was always anxious to work on his projects. Buford head butted (or table butted) Piper. 

 “What? Oh hey Buford! What’s wrong?”

 Buford thought of a way to communicate on the way here, he dug one of his legs into the wet dirt.

 “What are you doing?” Piper asked. 

 Buford continued to drag his legs through the dirt. 

 “I think he’s trying to tell us something. Look!” Exclaimed Jason. 

 The table had written a message saying ‘bring water, Leo needs you’ in the soft earth. 

 Piper’s eyes immediately shot open with worry. Before anyone could say anything, she grabbed her magic glass from the table and sprinted towards the woods. Buford and Jason ran to catch up to her. 

 Upon arrival, they heard groaning noises. It was like someone was in pain. 

“Leo” muttered Piper, before running inside.

 Leo was curled into a little ball. Now an important thing to know is that when someone goes through what Leo is, they tend to get delirious. They may imagine scenes from a book they have read, with them in it or as the main character. Leo had just read ‘heir apparent’ and was (still in pain mind you) imagining how he was crowned king. In his mind all he had to do was sit on the throne, and the pain would go away. He was utterly confused when it didn’t.

 Meanwhile Piper was shaking Leo. He finally snapped out of his daze (if only a little bit).

 “I’m hallucinating” said Leo “go get Will and the others please.” 

 It pained her to she her little brother like this. She tore herself from the bed, leaving Leo the glass of water, which he gladly took a sip of. Jason was sitting next to him on the bed, helping him drink as he was too weak to do it on his own. 

 “I’ll be right back” said Piper, “take care of Leo”

 Leo was moaning and muttering incoherent nonsense. This frightened Jason, he had never seen Leo as anything other that calm and thinking strait. He sat on the bed next to Leo, casually petting his hair as Leo cuddled up to him. Leo did not look content, though. He looked as though he was going to throw up. Piper chose that moment to bust through the door, Will, Hazel, Frank, Percy, Annabeth and Nico trailing behind. 

 “What’s going on?” Demanded Will rushing to Leo’s side.

 “I don’t know.” Replied Jason “Buford guided us to him, he was like this when we got here. He said he was hallucinating before he fell asleep.” 

 Will took Leo’s hand. His eyes widened almost comically. “We need to get him to the infirmary, NOW! He’s going into kinoacidosis, his blood sugar is through the roof! He might be T1D!” 

 Nobody knew what the hades Will was talking about except for Nico. His face paled as Frank scooped up Leo and everyone raced through the door. He had enough experience in the infirmary, and had a medical genius as a boyfriend, of course he knew what T1D was! But he didn’t tell anyone as they were already worried enough. 

 After racing through camp with campers gathering around the infirmary, Leo had woken up. However, he was in an extreme delirious state. 

 “We need a gurney STAT!” Yelled Will. “Someone get me an IV and insulin!” 

 All of a sudden, while still on the gurney, Leo bucked his hips upward and screamed “WATER” at the top of his lungs. This happened many times before he was wheeled to the intensive care section and fully woke up. 

 The 7 were worried as the doctors fussed around Leo, he thinks they gave him shots and an IV, but he couldn’t be sure as is brain was picking and choosing what moments to process. He didn’t notice the tiny flames in this hair that needed to be put out.

 Leo fell asleep and woke up many times. Each time a nurse would ask him the year, his birthday, and who was president. Leo answered the questions, and as he was about to go into a rant on how much he despises Trump, the nurse left. He passed out for good after repeating this many times. 

 When Leo came too, he found himself in a closed off section of the infirmary. All of his friends plus his siblings were standing against the wall at the foot of the bed. Leo could bearly move. 

 “Where am I?” He managed to croak out. 

 Piper looked up from where she was staring at the floor. “Oh gods Leo! You scared us all to death! You’re in the infirmary, you went into diabetic kino asidosis, you’re lucky to be alive. 30 more minutes and you would have died!” Piper sobbed against his chest.

 “Wait a minute!” Leo said as loud as he could, which wasn’t very loud, “can someone explain what is happening to me?” 

 Will decided that was a good moment to walk in “You’re awake! I’m assuming you want to know what’s going on?” 

 Leo nodded his head. 

 “You went into diabetic kino asidosis, which means that your body did not have enough insulin, causing ketones to form. Ketones destroy fat as fuel, instead of using regular sugar.” 

 “Okay, but why don’t I have any insulin in my body?” Questioned Leo. 

 “Have you been having stomach pains? Has it been hard to eat sugary foods?”  

Leo thought back to during the past 2 months. “yes” he replied. 

 “Your blood sugar has been high for over these two months, maybe even longer. The young adult body is very strong, but even it gives out at some point. Your pancreas some time around 2 months ago was attacked by other cells in your body that saw it as a threat. I don’t mean to be so blunt but” he took a deep breath. “you are a juvenile diebetic now, otherwise known as a type one diabetic. This is the type where it is permanent, so unless new technology or cures come out, or you happen to strike a deal with a god, you will have to use an insulin pump for the rest of your life.” He finished. 

 Leo didn’t really take it all in. Only later did he really understand what all this really ment. His friends and siblings were all in tears. They all came over and gently gave home a group hug, as if he were made of glass.

 ~Line break ~  

After 3 days in the infirmary. They let him eat for the first time. 

 “Okay, your meal had 53 carbs in it, your correction factor is 1/15. How many units do you take if your blood sugar is also 157?” 

Asked Will with his clip board out. Only Piper and Jason were in the room, with Leo of course. 

 “‘Bout 5 units” said Leo with his mouth full of food. 

 “Good, I’m going to go get the syringe now,” Leo almost choked on his food. 

“Wait what?!” Leo started freaking out. “No one said anything about needles!” 

Piper and Jason were doing their best to console the panicked Latino, who was doing his best to keep from crying. Leo had a huge fear of needles from some bad experiences while he was on the run. He was starting to panic until Piper soothed him with her charmspeak. Will walked in with a syringe, vial and alcohol wipe. 

 “Everything will be fine Leo” said Piper, as Will began to prep the syringe with insulin. 

 “Hey Piper?” Leo started. 

 “Yes?” She replied. 

 “Can I like, hold your side and hug you” Leo asked, close to tears. 

 “Of course.” She replied, “you don’t have to ask.” 

Leo snuggled into Piper’s side. Will lifted up Leo’s sleeve and wiped his upper arm with alcohol. He was put off by the scars on his arm, but he did not want to ask incase it panicked the Fire user further. He injected the needle with a small wimpier and sob from Leo. 

 “It’s okay Leo, it’s over.” Consoled Piper. Leo backed up a little and snuggled into the blanket that Annabeth and Percy got him. He held the stuffed owl that he received from Harley. Around him were others, such as the the fluffy brown dog holding a smaller dog from Hazel, the spherical squishy dog from Piper and Jason. Frank gave him his thoughts and prayers, at which Leo laughed and Hazel smacked the shapeshifters arm. And lastly, the small teddy bear, so worn you would never be able to guess it used to be fluffy. Nyssa used to be the only one who knew about it. It was the only thing that he managed to escape the fire with. It used to be his mother’s and she gave it to him. He asked Nyssa to bring it to him, and was surprised his friends didn’t judge him when he told them the story. 

 Leo promptly fell asleep. While in the hospital, he took frequent naps. He once woke up and described what he did the previous day, to find out that it happened 20 minutes ago! To be fair, he was still the tiniest but delusional still, his mind still slightly addled. 

 Piper sat down in one of the chairs next to the bed, exhausted. She has yet to leave Leo’s side. She has been sleeping in the bed with him, resulting in being woken up for a nurse to draw blood or test his blood sugar. Jason would come and go, letting the two honorary siblings be alone. She rested her head on the bed, holding Leo’s hand. A few minutes of sleep wouldn’t hurt , right? 

 ~Line break ~

 It was Leo’s last day in the infirmary, well, day in the hospital part of the infirmary. He still needed to go to a meeting with a nurse to be taught more about his condition and how to handle it. Leo sat in his original clothes, returned by the nurses. His room was bare except for a wagon full of his stuff, to be hauled to his cot in bunker 9. Piper took the wagon to drop it off, as he and the rest of his friends accompanied him to the big house for his meeting. 

Leo knew most of this stuff, like how to use his insulin pen and how to dispose of needles. He mostly fiddled around with a few rubber bands and metal scraps from his tool belt. This meeting was mostly for his ‘family’, so they could understand what they were getting in to. On the bright side, he got a stuffed lion with pads where he could practice giving injections!

 After the meeting, he spent the day in the more populous areas of CHB. He wanted to be somewhere not all cramped after being in his room for a week, save for a few short walks. During lunch and dinner, and before bed, he had Nyssa give him his shots in the arm after he checked his sugar and ate. 

 He had a few times where he went low. It was the worst. He was shaken and could hardly walk, as his legs felt like cooked noodles. He couldn’t build when he shook! Luckily, he didn’t die, so it’s all good.

 The next day, he wanted to gain control over his disease. He decided he would finally give himself his own shot. After assuring the rest of the gang, who were very apprehensive about giving Leo Valdez any sort of sharp object, Leo managed to slowly sink the short needle into his leg and push the end. His friends were all very proud. They gave him a group hug. For a moment, Leo forgot that anything was wrong, he forgot about his condition, his newfound problem. All that mattered is that if he could find a way to come back from the dead, he could manage to survive another disorder.

[thecurvyyvegan]

so you’re a vegan huh?

The question I get the most is “Why did you become Vegan?”  or “Is it hard being Vegan?”   I’m sure my fellow vegans out there get those same crazy ass questions. Answering that question usually takes about 20 minutes to explain. So why not start my first blog with an in-depth description of my decision to go vegan.

Reason # 1- Diabetes runs in my family. The first time I was ever introduced to the word Diabetes and really understood what it was and what it meant was when my mother was pregnant with my baby brother back in 2004. She had gestational diabetes and had to inject insulin before every meal in her stomach. Didn’t matter if we were at home or in public. She HAD to inject her insulin. That was definitely a hard pill to swallow at the tender age of 14.

Without going into complete details of my family business, I hadn’t seen my father in 9 years before we moved to Las Vegas at the end of 2004. Shortly after arriving in Las Vegas, I moved in with my dad and discovered he also was a diabetic. At the time, I didn’t know how bad it was.  I think I realized I knew my dad was really sick was when My Father and I moved out of our apartment ,and moved in with my mom and siblings about 6-7 months after I moved in with Dad. I vividly remember missing a lot of school during my freshman and sophomore year ,because I was either watching my baby brother and sister or just taking care of my dad. Fast Forward to December 2005 my dad had been in and out of the hospital for a couple months so there was a lot of back and forth from our house and University Medical Center. My uncle Irwin was shot and killed at a house party and we had to drive back to the bay area for his final services. So, we drove 9 hours to say our final good byes. It was great to see my family and to say goodbye to Irwin. When we got home, there was a note on our front door from the hospital to call them. When we finally reached the hospital… I received the most devastating news …  As a complication of the diabetes, my daddy passed away from congestive heart failure.   I was 15,  I barely had enough time to spend with my father… What am I supposed to do? I didn’t get the guidance I needed. Which Is probably why I have some of the issues that I have now,but that’s another post for another day. (When I get into why I started meditating.) I just couldn’t believe that I didn’t get a chance to spend more time with him.

Fast Forward to May 2017- My Mom has a heart attack as a result of her complication of her Diabetes. This is slowly breaking my heart. I know that the Lord puts us on this earth to serve a purpose... once we fulfill that purpose he brings us to the king, but I wasn’t ready for my mother to go the King. Better yet, I wasn’t ready to lose my mother the same way I lost my father. She had a surgery to place a stent then she had second surgery to have two more placed s few days later. Once she was released, she was placed on extremely expensive heart medication. THIS WAS MY TURNING POINT!  I started researching different ways to slow down the process of her heart failure. Western Medicine can’t possibly be the only way to reverse her diabetes.  There must be a natural remedy for her condition. If you know me on a personal level as I hope you will ,You know “Google is my friend” I google everything. I’m big on knowledge…  Reading Wikipedia is one of my favorite things to do…. LOL.

Reason # 2 - I’ve started a weight loss journey back in 2014 and I’ve gained every pound that I lost, PLUS MORE!!  I’d lose 40 lbs., and then gain 50lbs. Man I would eat good, and hit the gym, but I could never keep the weight off. I believe that culturally as children we’re served these large ASS portions and we’re forced to eat these large portions to even get something to drink. Let me tell ya’ll something… STOP DOING THAT S#! @!  You’re just handing diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart failure to your children.   At age 27, I’m barely learning what a healthy portion looks like. I then found out I was Pre-Diabetic, and I have PCOS, in a nut shell, I’m insulin resistant, and the only way to reverse these diagnoses was to change my diet. Not just to cut out red meats, pork etc.… I had to drastically change my diet. Which led me to veganism. A friend told me 6 months ago to try it, but I was like nahhhh bruh, this girl here loves seafood LOL. It took my aunt to tell me about the many hysterectomies in my family due to cyst bursting, or just painful menstruation cycles. They were going through exactly what I’m going through. I knew it was time for me to get my life right, and change my lifestyle.  I didn’t choose this mainly as a fad diet like so many other times before, I wanted to change my life style. I wanted to be healthy and to inspire others to change their lifestyle.

“Becoming a vegetarian adds 10 years to the average life span, becoming a vegan adds 15 years to the average life span”

Reason #3- While completing my own research, which included watching several heath related documentaries and reading through facts of living a plant based life. I just couldn’t fathom what else they put in our dairy or animal products.  I don’t even like animals like that, but what they do to your food is astonishing. I won’t go into depth of what’s in your food, I’ll let you do your due diligence and research that on your own. It’s not my job to convert you to veganism, but to inform you.

Is it hard being a Vegan?

Personally, NO.  I already had cut out the red meats and the pork. So, it was easy to cut out chicken and seafood. I’m lactose intolerant, So I ate very little dairy as it is. I do miss my aunties white cakes and crave a hard boiled egg here and there, but I’m staying true to this. Like I said above, this isn’t just a fad diet for me. This is my lifestyle change and I’m ready for all the obstacles it’s going to bring with it.

I’m so happy you decided to at least join in on watching me during my journey. Get ready to learn some vegan recipes, weight-loss tips, Gym work outs. And how to stay thick while being vegan.

Stay Vegan & Stay Curvy.

-thecurvyyvegan.

[holytheoristtastemaker]

It’s been 8 weeks since we are collectively experiencing the dramatic impact of COVID-19 pandemic. Since that time, we’ve all borne witness to how this flu virus impacting our families, our communities and our livelihood. Unemployment is on the rise, in fact, the labor department reported that another 6.6 million people had filed for unemployment benefits last week. Most city dwellers were not prepared for this kind of catastrophic event that caused many jobs. So here is my way of doing a public service to fellow developers and designers specially the to the younger generation. There are plethora of articles about computer programming languages and technologies for web and mobile application development but there are few that talks about the elephant in the room, the real-life struggle of web developers and designers. Whenever I go to hackathons, I meet people who are either unemployed or freelancing. Sadly, some go to this event for free food and temporary shelter because they can sleep and stay overnight at the venue. I also met aspiring coders who just graduated from coding boot camp looking for jobs. My designer and developer job is dispensable, our doomsday does not require an event of biblical proportion, all it takes is to lost a client, get fired or laid-off from our job. If  you are living in California our state has labor law called “At-will employment”. It is a term for contractual relationships in which an employee can be dismissed by an employer for any reason (that is,  without having to establish “just cause” for termination), and without warning, as long as the reason is not illegal (e.g. firing because of  the employee’s race or religion). The employers can outsource web and software development to programmers from  another country for a fraction of the price. For companies who’d rather hire someone onsite or offsite but still based locally inside United  States, some would prefer to hire you as an individual contractor, meaning no company benefits (paid sick leave, vacation leave), no health insurance, 401K, and perks that a permanent employee gets. Here are the things freelancers could do in order to survive the uncertainty of financial security and thrive in the tech industry while they are waiting for their big break or seeking permanent employment. Health Insurance This  is at the very top of my list. I learned this the hard way. My appendix ruptured years ago and since I do not have medical insurance the doctor does not want to perform surgery, his exact words was “you got no money to pay me,  just go home!”. I was in so much pain, my body is being poisoned, the nurse gave me a shot of Morphine to ease some pain but that made me so dizzy and vomit. Thank God, if not for the Good Samaritan who fought for me and my right as a patient to be admitted at the emergency, I will not get my operation. I  just want to emphasize how important it is to have a health insurance here in the united states. Make this your priority whether you have a job or not. If you need to  get out of your way to do your research and go to different clinics and  hospitals to know how you will get a free or low cost insurance, do so.  Do not procrastinate on this matter. It will cost you nothing to find a way to obtain health coverage, but it will cost you and your family too much trouble if you end up at the hospital bed—broke. Some Ways To Save Money I  think you will say your money is just enough to pay the bills and there is no more left to put aside for savings. I hear you, I’ve been there too. How about cutting down in unnecessary expenses? In my case, I cut down on junk foods. I like to eat something crunchy while I am working. I changed it to banana with almond butter. For me it works because the combination of the two is delicious and it fill me up easily and curbed my craving for junk foods. One banana cost 10–29 cents per piece, and the almond butter will last me for two weeks if I will consume it daily. I also tried to snack on celery sticks and carrots, I never thought I would like them, it gave me the same effect (crunchy) I get from eating chips. Now I enjoy eating beets and fruits for snacks whenever I am craving for something  sweet. When I go shopping, I will ask this question before making a purchase. “Is  this a need or a want?”. If the answer is need, I will buy it. If not, I  will pass. What do I get from this anyway? One time my wheel got punctured by a big nail because I parked next to a house undergoing construction. If I did not cut down on the unnecessary, I will not have the money to buy two new front tires. I  asked my dad to give me a AAA Auto Club membership as a birthday gift instead of a purse or clothes. So it did not cost me a penny to get my car towed from the location I got a flat tire all the way to the car mechanic’s shop. Towing company charges around $200–$300 depending on the location, I saved a good deal of money by getting a AAA card and the savings from affiliate stores discount that comes with it. Switch  to prepaid cellphone. I used to pay $100/month on my cellphone bill, so  I switched to prepaid and it saved me 40% plus I am not tied-up to a  2-year contract which will gravely affect your credit score when you can't afford to pay the bill and the cellphone provider put your account in collection. Low FICO score may affect your employment to big companies when they run your credit, and you will have to pay higher interest when you buy a car, and most often than not, when you decided to get your own place, you will be charged with a higher rent. Your chance of purchasing a home will be gravely affected as well, debt delinquency is a red flag to banks and mortgage brokers unless you are paying cash in full which is quite risky because they will report you to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by possessing hundreds of thousands of money in cash. Did I went too far? I think that's a good thing to know right? They don't teach that in computer science school. If  you are subscribed to Netlifx, Amazon Prime, Hulu, or YouTube Red, I  wonder how much time do you have in your hands to watch movies from these platforms. Unless they are required to do your work, think about which one you use less often and de-activate it for the mean time until you are making more money. There are numerous ways to save, the key ingredient here is to seek for other options and to cut down in your excess. Food Prepping After my surgery, it took me 6 months to recover. As I mentioned before, my  job is dispensable. I got replaced one week after my surgery because I  was working on a project that has a strict due date. I was working there for only a couple of months before my medical emergency. The money I was able to save from my two months of freelance work went towards my rent while I was recuperating. With the kindness of my friends from church, they gave me food that lasted for one week. But I do not want to abuse this kind gesture, they also got their own family to support. I did what I got to do — go to food banks. I  was lining up there for some months. The thing with food banks is you do not have that much of a choice when it comes to creating a recipe.  The first one I went to, they gave me a can of apple sauce, green beans, one box of oatmeal, pickled jalapeño, and peanut butter. So I bought a box of crackers from the dollar store and ate peanut butter and crackers the first few days. Second time I went there, I was able to talk to other people falling in line, they told me that in one day, they will visit 3–4 food banks to come up with a good recipe. I had a car so I volunteered to drive them around because they were senior citizens and I feel compassionate with the ordeal they were going through every week to get  food. They cannot find work because they are considered as unemployable because of their age and limited capacity for hard labor. They live with their children who were also struggling. What  I learned from this experience is to do food prepping during the time of plenty. Every time I go to the grocery I will buy extra canned and dry goods that has long shelf life. I do not buy in excess because it will only be wasted when the expiration date comes and you were not able to eat them or forgot about them. I will get 2 cans of tuna for example, something not superfluous. One for immediate consumption, the other for the rainy days. If you go to the market every week, then in one month you will be able to save four cans. In one year, you will be able to save up 48 items. That means when you lost your job or income, you know for sure you have food to eat for 48 days, this is what I call a life line, it will gave you sustenance until you find another job. One item is a base number or something to start with. To make it more realistic,  get 3 items extra to cover for three meals a day. Since you have free time, cut some coupons for buy one get one or shop at the place where they have a promo. This is doable, so I see no reason not to do it. Fasting The  benefits of fasting is it promotes blood sugar control by reducing insulin resistance, it helps fight inflammation and improve blood  pressure. You will have a good skin and loose weight as well. Fasting  also made me realize that I am not going to die if I will not eat solid  food for three days or more. That will get rid of your anxiety of not having food on your table. So you will have the clarity of mind to think about a new game plan in this time of famine. When your food supply is running low, you got to slow down your consumption as well. Once you experienced fasting, you will acquire a discipline to tame down your food cravings. If you are not ready to do a three day fast, you can do intermittent fasting instead. I tried it while I was in a ketogenic diet and I lost 5 lbs in two weeks. It also gives me more energy to spend on important things that I need to take care of. Bus Pass Finding  a new job means you need to go to employment agencies or go to job  interviews. Based on my experience, parking fees in Los Angeles is common specially if the office is located inside a building or establishments with nearby restaurants and shops. Depending on the location, the cheapest is $2/hr if you will park in meter, while inside a parking lot it may cost from $10 to $30. Not all company provides parking validation. There was a time I only got twenty dollars left and I spent it all by paying a parking fee in this job interview, but I did not get the job. It was painful, it is hard to explain if you have not been into the same situation. So get a bus pass and load it up when you have extra money. Even though I have a car, I will only use it going to places that is not accessible to public transportation, I am saving my gas for something more important. There was a time I gave my friends a hint that what I want for Christmas is a bus pass and not those things that shine and glitter. What I was asking for is practical and essential. This is applicable if you live in a place that have this type of transportation system. My point here is to prioritize what is pragmatic. Sleep in your car This may sound ridiculous but training pays. If you own a car, empty the trunk and fold the back seat (if it can). See if you will fit in there,  if not, fold back the front seat as well until you feel the most likely comfortable. It is not going to be comfortable for most cases unless you have a truck, van, or SUV. Depending on the size of your car, get a low height airbed, foam mattress, pillows or anything that will serve as a cushion to protect your back from the hard surface. Your car will be twice colder or hotter than your bedroom. So get your thickest blanket if it is cold season. Get a small luggage or any bag that will fit one week worth of clothes that you will wear on a daily basis, specially if you go to work. I know people who goes to work every day sleeping in their car. I was one of them. Sleep in your car as long as it is parked inside a home or private property. Do not sleep in your car if you are parked in the street without checking the ordinances where you live because your car will be confiscated and it will cost you an arm and a leg to retrieve it at the compound. Sleeping inside a car is illegal in California. Ask your church or neighbor if you can park your car inside their property. Look online where homeless people park to sleep. You may not need the information today, but it is golden when that time comes that your landlord kick you out or change the lock on your door. These are basic necessities provided that you have the resources to start with, your situation could be more complex. Some people sleep at homeless shelter, tent, parks, and anywhere possible. I stayed at a transitional home or sober housing one point in my life (even though I do not drink). The social worker recommended me there because its a house and a safe place. It is not free though, I paid for my rent and bills every month, the only upside is you do not have to come up with a deposit which adds up to the moving expenses. The not so good thing is I got zero knowledge and experience living with people rehabilitating from drugs, crime, mental health, and physical abuse. So it was a challenging and chaotic environment that I have to endure to survive. This chapter of my life was one great story of redemption, you can read it here if you are interested. Knowing  you will be able to survive in financial crisis will help eliminate your fears. Because fear block us from pursuing our dream and the ability to thrive. Remember, the main topic of this article is "survival". I wish the rainy days will not come, but there is no security in any type of job. I do understand why you chose this freelancer's life because you want a less stressful job, you want time for yourself and your family, you want stay away from office politics, you are exhausted from long hours of commute and most of all, you are sick and tired of toxic people at work sucking the life out of you. But life will throw us a curve ball. We are here to learn from each other's experiences and to be prepared for our own share of ups and downs. Stay Home Stay Safe and Level Up The company that I joined recently ceased their operation due to COVID-19 pandemic and I am using this free time to learn WordPress REST API at Lynda.com and APIs and Microservices at freeCodeCamp.org. I use freeCodeCamp's curriculum for my Coffee and Code meetups and coding boot camp. My students (kids and adults) likes the Responsive Web Design course. You get praises and kudos every time you completed the line of codes correctly, it is motivating. What I like about freeCodeCamp is you will learn to build real-life projects that you can add in your portfolio, earn certification, and help you prepare you for coding interview. Thousands of coders around the world are using freeCodeCamp and I recommend that you give it a try too. freeCodeCamp Courses Read books The book Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual offer techniques and practices for a more satisfying life as a professional software developer. In it, developer and life coach John Sonmez addresses a wide range of important "soft" topics, from career and productivity to personal finance and investing, and even fitness and relationships, all from a developer-centric viewpoint. In The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers, legendary software expert Robert C. Martin introduces the disciplines, techniques, tools, and practices of true software craftsmanship. Martin shows how to approach software development with honor, self-respect, and pride; work well and work clean; communicate and estimate faithfully; face difficult decisions with clarity and honesty; and understand that deep knowledge comes with a responsibility to act. One last thing I'd like to share is that reading helped me during my dark night of the soul. Aside from programming books, I also read about existentialism, stoicism, and psychology. Recently, I read The Plague by Albert Camus, Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. For the past two years, I spent hundred of hours reading the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, if you work in the creative industry like design and film making, his books will tap into your psyche and unconscious, my favorite is Liber Novus The Red Book. I think one of the best thing you can do to survive and thrive as a human being is to practice to be brave. Thank you for reading, I hope it inspires you.

http://damianfallon.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-to-survive-as-freelancer_46.html

[defiantscribe]

What Step Was Acceptance Again?

I'm in the last leg of my time away from my job and I've finally decided to accept some bits of my personal existence that I just won't be able to change.

For the record, this is going to be me whining about my current station in life and just generally feeling sorry for myself, so if this isn't what you were hoping to see or read, I'm at least being up front here and now so you can save yourself the headache and find something more entertaining or joyful on the internet.

I go back to work in 3 weeks, which sounds like a long time away, but for me it's going to pass in the blink of an eye and to be honest, I'm not sure I'm ready.  Not that I don't want to go do something constructive and use my skill set that's been getting lazy, but I just don't know if things are going to be better or more of the same tired bullshit I took the break to escape. Also, I'm worried about the potential animosity that will follow because my co-workers will definitely be happy for my return, but they've been struggling with bullshit for the past two months without me and that shit wears THIN after a bit.  So, that's another thing sitting at the back of my head as this return date approaches.

In this whole time off, I was hoping to find something "extra" to do that might bring me joy.  I will be straight: I haven't.  And I won't. I had all these grand ideas and things I wanted to accomplish and I'm working on the important things: going to the gym and exercising, trying to make sure I take my diabetic medications like I should (brb, need to go take my insulin shot), I have an appointment with a dermatologist in the next week to look at a sore that seems to have issue with healing that has prevented me from having "adult relations" with my wife for over a year, etc.

So it's not like I'm not doing anything, but as for trying to order my house, make things easier for my family, finding a set schedule, setting up rules and operations that would help keep things easy and functional have all floundered.  I started "vlogging" and after about 2 weeks of solid attempts, I bailed.  I straight bailed.  It was a hassle to update daily and when I didn't do anything of any intrinsic value, it was hard to keep updating on people that I'd crater in and watch anime or YouTube for most of my day until I had to pick up my kids or my wife.

And the YouTube thing was what I meant about trying to find something extra.  However, I learned a lesson in all this:  I'm boring AF if I'm not engaging with someone else.  Me, alone, is BORING. Some can do it, they can tell their stories and they're able to engage people without ever having another living soul to work off.  I'm not that way.  I work best when I can have someone to work off of or work with; me sitting in my upstairs, with nothing much else but a wall behind me was about as entertaining as listening to a toddler try to explain quantum mechanics.

Writing has been about the only thing that I've ever been "somewhat" good at.  I can get my point across, I can make my jokes or edit the dumb shit I say so this way it doesn't look like I'm a raging idiot. And for the record, this is all being written mostly on the fly.  I usually write in Notepad, then slap this trash into Word for spellcheck purposes. I change very little that I actually write. I feel that writing what comes to mind and sticking with it is the most honest version of writing and I'm not here to yank your dicks around, I'm here to get all the stupid shit that bothers me off my chest and hope that someone else out there reads it, relates a bit and maybe feels a bit better about their situation if mine is worse.

Another part of what I was attempting to do during this break was to learn how to use my non-linear editing software. It's HitFilm Express for anyone interested, it's free, but has paid versions for extra perks. It's a lot like Premiere, so check it out if you're looking at video editing.  There's very little I haven't been able to do with it and they do tutorials on YouTube and all that.  Shameless plug for them because seriously.... this program is pretty bitchin for being free. But, even with that, I haven't fussed much with it.  Two main reasons were: it's time consuming.  Like really time consuming.  And I just didn't have the time to invest in that.  I'm trying to do laundry, I'm trying to make things in my kitchen or clean after my family (it's a job in itself) and the second reason was that most of my imagination is toast these days.

Sure, I can paint a colorful picture when describing a tech issue (most of my co-workers and clients get a kick out of my analogies), but I just can't come up with the shit I could 20 years ago.  I turn 40 next month and I just can't think of things like I used to.  I remember some of my old ideas and I just can't expand and when I attempt to develop something new, I can start, but I never finish. That's frustrating to say the very least.

I've also gotten to a point in my life where I'm not really wanting and I don't have any goals left to set. I have everything (besides money) that I will need, so I don't really have any desire to reach.  I don't mind traveling, but that's not some big thing for me.  Getting up early, flying, finding new plane, getting on it, spending time somewhere else.... it's work.  It's not a relaxing time, it's like a scheduled event that I have to meet certain checkpoints otherwise it was "wasted".

I'm not really that creative with my art.  I can't draw to save my life, unlike my daughter who is ALL ABOUT THAT and is pretty good.  My son's into gaming and can literally spends HOURS doing it.  After a while, I get bored.  It's fun to play with friends.... well, online friends, but as they all trickle out, I get to a point where I'm just like, "Nope, gonna go do something else now..." and peace out.  I don't play games for hours on end.  I got Skyrim for free and I've played like 76 minutes of it because I know how involved it is and I just do not have the time to invest in it.  I already isolate myself away from my family for the most part, don't need something to help facilitate that.

I don't wood work, I'm afraid of most power tools (saws especially).... I'm not musically inclined (got a keyboard and guitar in the house, they collect dust) and about the only thing I'm good at is modern electronics.  I essentially have 4 smart TVs in my house, all with computers hooked up to them, but do nothing fantastic with them besides Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and use the Roku that's on all but 1 TV.

I've lost the desire, nay the zeal, to pursue anything more.  So, I've decided to simply stop.  Existing is tough enough, I think I just need to focus on that.  Don't misconstrue that, I'm not about self harm or the like, if you've read my older stuff you know my opinions, but I just don't get excited about anything anymore.  It's all mundane.  It's trite. And I've spent so much time trying to find something, ANYTHING, that gives me that youthful fulfillment and I got jack shit.

This is about the only thing that I still find enjoyable, but I don't have stories in my head.  I have one story in my head I've been working on since I was I think a freshman in high school, but it's a cringefest that if re-written by me today would be a completely different story.

And that's where I'm at. Just "here".  And as much as I feel I should be doing more, I have nothing more to chase. I'd rather take a depression nap because at least after that I feel awake. Angsty 39 year old guy writing on Tumblr, ghost copying over to Twitter.... this is who I am.  And, sadly, I'm indifferent.  Man, I'm a sad, lonely crab.  I really should find a hobby.  Suggestions?

One last note: After throwing this long ass bitch into Word, no grammatical errors (yay), but I don’t know how to properly spell: existence, definitely, intrinsic, pursue and apparently Word doesn’t understand ‘misconstrue’.  I guess acing English from K through 12 actually did something for me.  Don’t ask me about adverbs or adjectives or any of that nonsense, I still don’t understand that shit.

[iamkellyadams]

Melt Away Up To 40 Pounds in 4 weeks …with ZERO dieting, exercise, or pills

Hi, I’m Carly & on this page you would learn how I, a burn-out, 40 year old mother lost 84 lbs doing NO exercise, using a simple set of Flavor-Pairing Rituals!

I call it my ‘Cinderella Solution‘ a rapid, safe and rewarding weight loss diet plan for women only who wants to lose 10, 20 or even 50 pounds.

Specifically designed to work on women, which guarantees daily weight loss, using an ancient principle of ‘flavor-pairing’, which supercharges female metabolism. But before moving ahead, just take a sneak peak of at 200+ lbs…

I discovered this transformation Cheat-Code that over 93% of people still have no idea exists after my life threatening experience which triggered a flood of what scientists are calling the weight-loss doubling molecule that lay dormant inside even the most stubborn female metabolism!

Which is why my friends, my family and even my doctor were shocked– when this sequence of events not only ended my battle with hypertension, pre-diabetes, endometriosis, and even depression…

…. and compelled my body to initiate a 22-hour-a-day fat burning sequence that grew stronger with each passing day! Click here and watch this video where I explain how you can use this simple solution and trigger a jaw dropping, awe-inspiring transformation beyond your imagination!

Centuries old, proven-to-work weight-loss rituals from the planet’s SLIMMEST, FITTEST and HEALTHIEST countries.

As you’ll learn from my journey, that after a while, the old-school methods like excess cardio, low carb diets and detoxes that most fitness and nutrition “guru’s” advocate don’t really work. Maybe if you’re a guy or if you’re 22-years old with a lightning fast metabolism…. However, if you’re reading this there’s a good chance that you don’t fall into those categories.

The typical female metabolism is anything but typical and it takes more than the latest workout video to make a permanent change. The good news is that permanent change isn’t rocket science, it just takes a little thinking outside the box….

The Cinderella Solution: Weight Loss from Inside-Out

Before I explain the core premise of The Cinderella Solution, I want you to consider how many times you have been here in the past. Whether you are in your 20’s or 50’s, one way or another, I know you must have tried to lose weight at some time of your life. While the motivation for embarking on a diet and/or exercise plan may have differed, the goal is generally the same for all of us – we want to look and feel better – The primary motivation is usually aesthetically driven.

“Secondary” incentives like overall health, energy, vitality and longevity typically take a back seat. This is human nature and we are all guilty – It’s not a bad thing. However, it is actually those benefits perceived as secondary, that if healed correctly and set to optimal levels, will not only allow for rapid, but more importantly, permanent weight loss.

The main take-away here is that this isn’t another ‘quick-fix’ that barks diet demands at you without telling you why you are doing what you are doing. Again, the goal here is to heal your body from the inside-out in order to feel what it’s finally like to achieve fast, safe and permanent weight loss.

I want you to get started as soon as possible but studies show that we are more likely to do something if we are told “why” we are doing it, along with the proof that it works. Watch me explain how this simple 2-step flavor pairing ritual could trigger the best weight loss transformation for you starting today.

At almost 40 years old, I eliminated nearly 84 pounds of confidence-stealing, energy-sucking and potentially life-ending body fat. And finally got to live my ‘happily ever after’ reversing all signs of hypertension, diabetes and depression.

‘This was me on the darkest day of my life’ … having my 208-pounds, disease-saturated and confidence-starved body hit the floor that morning WAS my fate.

All while managing to lose 12 dress sizes and 23 inches of my waist … Shrinking from a whopping 42 inches all the way around – down to only 26″ inches! Watch this video and I promise to reveal my full transformation along with the secret “Flavor Pairing Ritual” I used to melt away all my excess body fat faster than I ever thought possible-without pills or depriving myself on the latest fad keto, calorie counting, satisfaction stripped diet…

(Video plays in a different window)

My Promise To You

I guess my promise to you today, woman to woman, is that I wouldn’t have put in the 100’s of hours it took to create this if I didn’t think it would be of great benefit.

I can’t make some sort of “guarantee”, because we can’t “get time back”. But hey, if a relatively small time investment today could teach you even just one thing that you can take forward to get more healthy, wouldn’t it be worthwhile?

So, if you’re tossing up whether to go and grab your headphones right now and settle in, then I say “GIVE IT A SHOT!”

You’ve got nothing to lose!

Watch how to use this uniquely easy ‘falvor-pairing’ trick for rapid, satisfying and safe weight loss.

3 Fat Hoarding “Evil-Step-Mother-Hormones”

I.C.E hormones (i.e. Insulin, Cortisol, and Estrogen) also known to be 3 fat-hoarding, “Evil-Step-Mother-Hormones” who inevitably “lose their way” in our mid-20’s.

Lets see how you can make these rogue hormones once again become the “fat-burning queens” and starts running like clockwork.

Let me explain…

These 3 hormones play crucial role in a women’s health, metabolism and weight loss.

They do numerous jobs around the body, but let me give you a quick run down…

➢ INSULIN: transports energy to the cells that need it and quite often to the cells that DON’T need it when there is excess sugar floating around in your body.

➢ CORTISOL: released into the body at times of stress. During exercise cortisol can help increase fat burning, but having chronic high levels of cortisol is a recipe for snail pace fat loss and stubborn levels of belly fat.

➢ ESTROGEN: gives the female body it’s womanly characteristics, but if the ratio of estradiol + estrone are out of whack, then losing fat from the hips, butt and thighs is going to be an uphill struggle.

And this is where I hit a jackpot, and found an easy way to fix my I.C.E. hormones. Then, I went on to lose 84 lbs, drop 12 dress-sizes, burned 23 inches of fat off my waist and hips, and finally got my life back using a simple 2-step ritual called ‘flavor-pairing-ritual‘ that got my hormones to play together nicely.

I cannot describe what’s it’s like to actually FEEL, when something begins to work from the moment you start all the way until you lose every last pound…

The Metabolic Time Bomb

I mean, like even before I started gaining all that weight in my mid 20’s…

… that every woman falls victim to the shadowy Metabolic-Villain that forces the 3 hormones that kept you fit, youthful, healthy and happy when you were younger,

To literally funnel floating fat-cells into every single area exposed by your bathing suit…

…all while introducing you to a lifetime struggle with body-image, while locking in your weight-management hormones to ‘storage-mode’.

And even though none of this is our fault because nobody, not even our doctor warns us about this when we’re younger… Unless of course you are one of the lucky 8% blessed with near-perfect-genetics…

As women we are ALL VICTIMS of this fat-hoarding 30-year sentence…

The one that dismembers your metabolism form the end of puberty all the way through menopause.

However if it wasn’t for that fateful day not-so-long ago…

I could have never discovered these kindergarten-simple “Flavor-Pairing” rituals from a tiny island 6000 miles across the ocean…

And transform bodies and lives of over 16787 other women just like you, in the last year alone.

Because the truth is,

You are literally only one unusual step in an unexpected direction away from knocking over the big fat-loss domino that’s standing between you and the body you’ve been dreaming for so long.

Just like Susan did at 53 years old…who used a ‘carb-pairing’ ritual to channel a fat-flushing current…

Forcing 48 pounds of fat from her body while allowing her to recover the youthful glow lost in her 20’s…

Or even ladies with once-silent metabolism, like Kelly who lost 52 pounds.

Using the salty-sweet flavor-pair that revs up fat-burning by over 200%…

THE BEST PART IS,

Sadly, you’ve never heard of their secret because it’s so closely guarded by their top gatekeepers.

It wasn’t until a few highly respected doctors and government officials broke their code of silence that I was able to unleash that flood of age-reversing enzymes,

Allowing me to reclaim my body, my energy, my husband

And as you can see here….My Youth!

Luckily these battles with weight and body image inspired me to open my own special-place devoted to those looking to reclaim the health, happiness and confidence that had abandoned them so long ago.

Pretty soon after opening my first weight loss center a ‘buzz’ began to circle around the city…

➢ It’s Your Turn Now, Get The Transformation Cheat-Code Blueprint Today

The Discovery

It wasn’t until my team and I started examining the world’s healthiest nations that I knew we were on the right track. “Healthy” can mean a lot of different things to different people, however for most of us that means a leaner, more slender body, that operates at peal levels with the capacity to live a longer life.

This prompted us to dig deep into the practices of the world’s healthiest countries to uncover what it was they were doing to stay more slender, feel better and live better and live longer that we do in Westernized World. It turns out the differences were shocking!

The majority of our research proved that it wasn’t so much about what they ate…instead it was more about how they ate it. It’s not that they exercised “more” – in fact these countries placed way less emphasis on the amount of exercise they did. The fittest nations all took a widely different approach to how they exercised in order to maintain their titles as “worlds healthiest countries.”

It’s not about WHAT you’re doing – It’s HOW you do it!

It all came down to the unique, usually unheard of “rituals” the people in these countries used to live longer, stay skinnier and feel better every single day. The good news was, as we dug even deeper, these countries didn’t just become the world’s healthiest nations… most of them had remained in the top-ten in multiple “worlds healthiest” rankers since researchers began rating them. This gave us the peace-of-mind knowing that not only did these rituals work, but they had been working for decades… even centuries.

As you start your journey you’ll have the same peace-of-mind knowing that the easy to follow and simple-to-start rituals like “Flavor-Pairing” & “Nutrient Timing” are the same tactics myself and thousands of other women have used to get our lives and our bodies back.

The Moment Everything Changed

That alone got my attention but what really took my breath away were the statistics that backed up these claims from world’s most respected health authority:

Japanese women live to an astonishing average of 87-years-old,

A record number that has continued to climb since the 1960’s.

That’s over 10 years longer than we get to live here…10 YEARS!

Can you imagine getting an extra decade on this planet with your loved ones?

But the Japanese were also named the most “Disease-Resistant” & “Happiest” country as well. These women had uncommonly low rates of dementia, depression, heart attacks and strokes.

So not only were they living longer,

But for the last half-century, their quality of life was dominating ours as well.

As I’d later find out,

The Japanese had made one simple “alteration” to their eating habits 62 years ago.

And it was this subtle,

Yet profound adjustment that super-charged their immune systems

With the unique hormonal-synergy needed to produce “Warrior-Antibodies”

That actually fought tooth-and-nail against disease and obesity.

It turns out that Shoku-Iku (which translates to Nutrition Architecture) is a set of guidelines, broken down into extremely simple food and flavor-pairing rituals.

The primary goal of each pairing was to create “hormonal and metabolic balance to promote health, well-being, strength and happiness from within”. As I mentioned before, here we do the exact opposite.

The scientists explained that in North America we literally try to “attack” obesity, disease and depression from the outside With what they called “Shotgun-Approaches” like the diets, exercise routines and pills we’re all used to.

Back In 1966, as the fast-food craze hit America…

…The Japanese Government instead passed laws To make their “wellness from within” Flavor-Pairing Rituals and Shoku-Iku, the country’s mandatory Nutritional Platform.

So while we quickly became the fattest, sickest and unhealthiest country on the planet, The Japanese just kept losing weight while living longer, happier more fulfilling lives,

All because of a simple, yet metabolically explosive set of Flavor-Pairing rituals they adopted over 50 years ago.

And that’s what really gave me peace of mind that flavor-pairing was the key to unlocking the female fat-loss code…

… This wasn’t some pill being concocted in a lab or “get-skinny-by-yesterday” diet dreamed up by some TV doctor … Without any long term testing to see if it actually worked or more importantly, if it was safe.

This was 50 years of proof combined with 2 billion people living leaner, healthier longer lives.

And did I mention that Japanese women consume more carbohydrates than any other country as well?!?!

In fact,

They eat almost double the carbs we eat here!

From there we began to examine other nations that topped the list for “Healthiest Countries” like Spain, Switzerland and Australia.

The team and I dug deep to uncover their secrets for living these ultra-healthy, lean and long-lasting lives

Focusing specifically on weight loss and how they actually maintain such lean and slender figures.

Pretty soon a shocking pattern began to emerge…

The women who lost weight the fastest and those who were able to maintain such desirable life-long figures

Free from the stress of and guaranteed failure of dieting,

All practiced simple rituals that paired the right foods and flavors throughout their day.

The cutting-edge research proved

We were shocked because even though these simple, zero-cost rituals had been undeniably proven,We had never seen the indisputable evidence until now…

It turns out there’s a despicable reason for hiding the key to unlocking the female fat-loss code…

It’s the same reason you haven’t heard about it from those TV doctors, social media weight-loss gurus, fat-loss infomercials or even your own doctor…The truth is simple…Our government can’t tax easy fat-doubling rituals and pharmaceutical

And supplement companies can’t make money off a simple flavor pairing trick that signals around-the-clock weight loss!

Because these strategies cost only pennies-a-day and are so extremely simple…

…The weight-loss industry wants to keep them locked away and buried. And if you lose the weight extremely fast, like you will this time, they can’t hook you with another fad-approach…

…that kills your dreams and empties you and your families pockets yet again.

And I’ll tell you right now, Once you hit your own weight loss goal, That 20, 30, 40 or even 100 pounds, It Just feels like an “added bonus” compared to knowing that you’ve just bought yourself extra time on this planet with your friends and family.

However, how you feel about that lady you see staring back you in the mirror each morning can be pretty powerful,

(Video plays in a different window)

So I should give you a glimpse of what you too can expect when the weight just starts falling off… Starting tonight!

I’ve got good news for you if you are a woman who refuses to give up and finally start living your own Cinderella Story inside

THE BODY YOU DESERVE

Introducing…

The Cinderella Solution offers an easy to start, simple-to-follow cure using Flavor-Pairing rituals that hit the “reset-swtich” on your metabolisms 3 key fat-burning hormones; Insulin, Cortisol and Estrogen.

THE CINDERELLA SOLUTION

Our research that spans 60 years of proof, Combined with the results from 10’s and 1000’s of women across the globe have already proven that ladies like you are only step away from signalling a supercharged fat-loss doubling effect within your body.

If you want to watch the fat float off your body in the next 3 weeks, you simply need to re-ignite your 3 fat burning hormones to create a fat burning domino effect from the inside out.

➢ Check out the official website of ‘Cinderella Solution’, here.

The post Melt Away Up To 40 Pounds in 4 weeks …with ZERO dieting, exercise, or pills appeared first on Food, Health & You.

[mrlongkgraves]

Tess’s story: Diabetes is a daily reality

Tess, around the time she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes [PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE KEELE FAMILY]

I was 4 years old when I was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. For a while before that, I had some of the classic symptoms but nobody recognized them. I was drinking water constantly, not eating much food and lost about 30 pounds. One hot summer day, I passed out on the playground. My mom took me to the hospital and they sent me right to Boston Children’s Hospital. The staff checked my blood sugar level — it was supposed to be about 100 and it was 859. I spent a week in the hospital.

That was 14 years ago. I’m a senior in high school now, but I distinctly remember my mom crying and not understanding why. The fact that I had diabetes didn’t feel real until I had my first insulin injection. I was in my hospital bed, a nurse was trying to give me a shot and I freaked out. When I got a little older, I realized the disease wasn’t going to go away. By the time I was 8, I was giving myself my own insulin injections.

Learning to live with diabetes

Type 1 diabetes is referred to as a chronic condition. The pancreas stops producing insulin and your body can’t process the sugar in your blood. At first, I was on a very strict diet and had to eat every two to three hours. My parents have never been big planners and suddenly they had to plan every meal and keep track of every carb I ate. They decided that the whole family would eat with me. We all switched to whole wheat pasta and whole milk. Because fat helped keep my blood sugar levels stable, we all had ice cream at night.

Over the years, I’ve had to deal with a lot of misconceptions about diabetes. Some of the kids in my kindergarten thought they could catch diabetes from me. My diabetes educator, Kristen Rice, gave us the book, “Rufus Comes Home,” about a bear that has diabetes. The school nurse came in and read the book out loud to my class. That helped the kids understand, but it also made some of them think they were my nurse. They’d say things like, “Tess, do you have your insulin kit?” or “Tess needs to go to the front of the lunch line.”

People assume I have type 2 diabetes and that I was once obese or ate too much sugar as a kid. No one ever wanted to give me candy, even though sometimes, if my blood sugar was low, I actually needed it.

Now I have an insulin pump. I wear it on my upper arm and it gives me insulin all day long. It’s more convenient, I don’t have to carry around as many supplies or give myself injections, but it’s also very visible. People notice the pump on my arm, or they see me checking my blood sugar and ask about it. With my friends, they just don’t care. I don’t worry about them judging me. They know I’ve got to do this to stay healthy.

On the court

I’ve always been a very athletic person. I’m a starter on my school’s basketball team. It took a while for my coach to understand why I sometimes couldn’t go back in three minutes after coming off the court. Sometimes he’ll ask me to go back in and I have to tell him I need more rest. We’re at a good point now and he realizes I’ll let him know when I’m ready.

Diabetes can make things more complicated, but I’ve discovered that as long as I stay on top of my blood sugar and make sure it doesn’t go too high or too low, it’s easy to manage. A bunch of my friends and I climbed Mt. Washington this summer and my blood sugar was fine.

I still have regular checkups at Boston Children’s. I live in Western Massachusetts, so it takes a lot to get there: missing school, finding parking, etc. But I love how the nurses there are talkative and kind. They make me feel like a person, not just a patient. The last time I was there, the nutritionist and I talked about Dunkin’ Donuts for 20 minutes. For me, diabetes is a daily reality, so it’s awesome when someone on my care team treats it that way, because I know they get it.

Learn more about the Diabetes Program at Boston Children’s.

The post Tess’s story: Diabetes is a daily reality appeared first on Thriving Blog.

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[lazyupdates]

It’s been over a decade since Sonam Kapoor made her on screen debut with Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya. And in these 10 years, we got to see different shades of Sonam Kapoor on-screen. From the shy and innocent Sakina in Saawariya, to the fearless and courageous portrayal of Neerja, Sonam has given us many memories from her characters on screen. Along with some brilliant performances on screen, Sonam has also gotten herself the reputation of being the ultimate fashionista in Bollywood. Whether she is walking the ramp or just spotted during a casual outing in the city, Sonam always has her style game on-point.

She also has been walking the ramp at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival for quite a few years now and has managed to make heads turn at every single appearance. Sonam has always been at the forefront when it comes to standing up for the environment and raising awareness regarding important issues like breast cancer and LGBT rights. So, we give you a complete timeline tracking the journey of Sonam Kapoor over the years.

As we all know, Sonam Kapoor comes from a family with a rich heritage in the film industry. She is the daughter of Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor and Sunita Kapoor and is the niece to producer Boney Kapoor and actor Sanjay Kapoor. So, it is no surprise that Bollywood runs in her blood. Interestingly, Sonam was more interested in writing and direction than in acting earlier. And upon her father, Anil Kapoor’s recommendation she managed to bag a role in the crew of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black as an assistant director.

It was during the filming of Black when Sonam Kapoor began to develop interest in acting. During the shoot of Black, Sanjay Leela Bhansali told Sonam that he wanted to cast her as the lead in his next film. Motivated by Bhansali’s words Sonam Kapoor ended up loosing 35 Kg’s within a span of two years.

While we all are admirers of Sonam Kapoor’s hot bod now, many might not know she had severe issues with her weight when she was younger. Sonam was diagnosed with insulin resistance and polycystic ovarian disease. This provoked her to spread awareness for diabetes, for which she shot a special commercial and also promoted the launch of Kalli Purie’s Confessions of a Serial Dieter. During the launch of the book, Sonam spoke about her condition and revealed that it was Sanjay Leela Bhansali who gave her the wake up call which motivated her to get in shape. She said, “I was 63 kilos at the age of 12, then I lost my weight because at 13 I started noticing boys and boys started noticing me and then when I was 15 and I had to start studying I put on a lot of weight again and I was 86 kilos till I was 19. Sanjay Leela Bhansali saw my face and said you have a beautiful face but your body is like an Ajanta Elora painting, which was happening like 100s and 100s of years ago, it’s not happening anymore! You have to wear a backless choli and you can’t have fat rolls sticking out from behind! That was a reality check.”

Sonam Kapoor later went on to study acting under Roshan Taneja, Jayati Bhatia and Feroz Abbas Khan. During an interview with a leading daily, she also revealed that her admiration of Nutan and Waheeda Rehman further inspired her for being an actor. She said, “I simply adore Waheeda Rehman. From her acting to her choice of films — it needed guts to choose movies like Pyaasa or Guide — she went ahead with it. I’m also very inspired by Nutan. I love her for her work in Bandini and Saraswatichandra. Both have looked good and done path-breaking films. I love their quality of doing different things. They stood out as actors who are not just beautiful faces.”

While Saawariya did not manage to impress the audience and the critics, Sonam’s work in the film received praise. Although, her character in the film wasn’t very likeable but she definitely impressed everyone with her charming screen presence. Saawariya also earned her a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut (Female).

In 2009, she was seen in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Delhi 6 which also starred Abhishek Bachchan Om Puri and Waheeda Rahman. Even though, this film failed to perform at the box-office again, Sonam’s character of a bubbly and full of life Delhi girl certainly grabbed many eyeballs.

Sonam’s first commercial success came in 2010, with Punit Malhotra’s I Hate Luv Storys, which also starred Imran Khan. I Hate Luv Storys was a film about how two completely opposite people end up together. Sonam played the character of Simran, a girl who believes that her life is just like a typical Bollywood romantic film. In fact, her life does (sort of) resemble that theory as well with her perfect job and a “Mr.Perfect” finance. On the other hand, we had Jay (Imran Khan), who didn’t want anything to do with love stories. His hate for Sonam’s obsession with romance causes them to fight a lot earlier but they eventually become good friends. Simran’s close bond with Jay brings problems in her love life to the point that she believes Jay not Raj is the right man for her. However, when she finds out that he doesn’t feel the same, she leaves town and does not inform him out of embarrassment. During Simran’s absence Jay realises that he too has fallen in love with her. In the end, Jay confesses his love to her and she reveals that she still feels the same. I Hate Luv Storys was Sonam’s first commercial success and the major reason for that was it was able to struck the right chord with its target audience. Although the story didn’t have anything extra ordinary, Sonam and Imran’s chemistry in the film made it a fun a watch. The lifetime collections of the film were ₹72.5 crore.

In the same year, Sonam played the eponymous role in Aisha. Aisha was a romantic comedy based on Jane Austen’s novel Emma and was also produced by her younger sister Rhea Kapoor. Along with Sonam, Aisha also starred Abhay Deol, Ira Dubey and Amrita Puri. Even though the film wasn’t able to perform at the box office, Sonam’s performance received rave reviews from critics all over. Many believed that Sonam’s role in Aisha was tailor made for her personality which is why she was such a good fit.

After this Sonam Kapoor had a string of films which failed to live up on people expectations. Films like Thank You, Mausam and Players failed to impress the critics as well as the audience.

A turning point in her career came when she seen in Aanand L Rai’s Raanjhanaa in 2013. In Raanjhanaa, Sonam played the character of Zoya Haider, a student who later gets drawn into politics after the death of her Sikh lover. Since Sonam was playing the role of a student, she interacted with students, attended several workshops and also practised with the theatre groups from Jawaharlal Nehru University. She also revealed during an interview with a leading daily, that she drew inspirations from Jaya Bachchan’s character in the 1971 film Guddi for her role. She said, “The spunkiness that Jayaji’s character had in Guddi… We needed that. I needed an inspiration as in real life my schooling was conservative and different. So I needed a starting point… I did watch that film again. It was quite amazing to play this role. Jayaji’s performance inspired me to do better. It was perfect for the character I was going to portray.” Her performance in the film was described as the best of her career at the time and also earned her the first nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Actress.

In the same year, Sonam was seen in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Bhaag Milkha Bhaag which was a biopic on the legendary Indian Athlete Milkha Singh. Although her role in the film wasn’t large she managed to impress the audience with her portrayal of the innocent and sweet girl who Milkha Singh fell in love with. In an interview with a leading daily, Sonam revealed that she charged just Rs 11 for her role in the film. She said, “They had a budget and they told me they can’t give money and that’s why I said give Rs11 and I will do the film. I love Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. For me he is somebody who gave me a lot of confidence and helped me open up. For me the reason I did ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’ was because it was an outstanding script, I wanted to work with Farhan Akhtar and I wanted to again work with Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. My role is a pivotal role, and it was an honour to play the part. I feel great; I’m really proud to be a part of this film. I love working with Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, so to be a part of Milkha is amazing because it’s such an inspirational story, and the inspiration for Milkha is my character, so I think it’s beautiful being a part of the story.”

After Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, her next hit was Khoobsurat (2014) which also starred Pakistani actor Fawad Khan. The film was an adaptation of the 1980 film of the same name, playing the role which had originally been given to Rekha. Khoobsurat earned her a nomination at the Filmfare Awards in th Best Actress category the following year. After the release, people started drawing comparison between Sonam’s and Rekha’s character in the film. When Sonam was asked about her response to these comparison in an interview with a leading daily, she said, “People are drawing comparisons, obviously, but I can never be as good as her, and this is not just about Rekhaji. Meena Kumari, Katherine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn … they were all icons and I am inspired by all of them. I am also inspired by other women who are artists. I am inspired by clothes that I find beautiful, or by art. I am not trying to imitate or ape someone and there is more to me than just the clothes. My paintings, for instance. I love art. I collect books. I do so many things and there are so many other facets to my personality as well. But I guess I can’t really carry my paintings or my books around with me, so it’s my clothes that become the talking point. I don’t think I can do justice to what Rekha has done. This film is an ode to Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s filmmaking. There are very few films that have been wholesome entertainers and have great value. Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s films appealed to all, as they were fun films with a message. Today, such films are made by Raju Hirani. It is a huge responsibility but it was exciting to work on this film.”

Sonam Kapoor also featured in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015) opposite Salman Khan. Although the film didn’t impress the critics it went on to score big at the box office. The film managed to make just over 200 crore (203.53 approx) and became one of the highest grossing films of the year.

In 2016, Sonam was seen in Neerja which is widely considered the highlight of her career so far. In Neerja, Sonam played the role of Neerja Bahnot, a courageous air hostess, who died while saving the passengers of the hijacked Pan Am Flight 73 in 1986. The film garnered massive critical acclaim and she went on to win the Filmfare critics Award for Best Actress and was honoured with a special mention at the National Film Awards. In an interview with a leading daily, Sonam also revealed that this project was extremely close to her heart since she was portraying the story of a real person. She said, “With every film, I would say that it was my most difficult. I think, if with every film I don’t challenge myself over and over again then I will get bored. So, each movie is equally challenging for me. Definitely, since Neerja is my latest film, it was the most challenging. I am also more emotionally attached to it because it is a real person and to live up to that expectations it was challenging, yes.”

After a 2 year break from the silver screen, Sonam Kapoor was seen in Akshay Kumar’s Pad Man (2018). The film was based on a short story in Twinkle Khanna’s book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad. Pad Man told the story of Arunachalam Muruganantham, the man who campaigned for menstrual hygiene in rural India. Although her role in the film was short in duration, Sonam said that she took the project because she felt it was important to address such an issue. In an interview with a leading daily, she said, “It’s a really difficult phase for us women. Those of us who have a platform and a voice, must use it to express what we believe in. PadMan addresses itself to the question of menstruation. It’s a huge issue for a majority of woman in our country. It didn’t take me long to say yes to PadMan. And I am so glad I did it.”

Sonam Kapoor’s latest release was Veere Di Wedding. Along with Sonam, the film also stars Kareena Kapoor Khan, Swara Bhaskar and Shikha Talsania. Veere Di Wedding is a story about four best friends and what transpires when one of them is getting married. The film overall has received a positive response from the critics as well as the audience and is doing phenomenally well at the box office.

Sonam also has an extremely exciting line up of films coming up. She will first be seen in the Sanjay Dutt biopic titled Sanju which also stars Ranbir Kapoor and releases on June 29. The film is without a doubt one of the most eagerly awaited movies of the year. Ever since the trailer has been out, people cannot stop raving about it. She will also be seen in Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, which also stars her father, Anil Kapoor, Rajkummar Rao and Juhi Chawla. The film is scheduled to release in the later half of 2018.

The post Birthday Special: Sonam Kapoorâs complete timeline in Bollywood appeared first on Lazy Updates.

[mrsronan]

Starry Eyed

PART 2 OF 4 About a month ago I had the opportunity to speak to a MOPS group that meets at my church. The theme for the national MOPS organization this year was “We are the Starry Eyed.” After researching a bit of how the organization was rolling with that, here’s what I decided to share with the group of moms I met with. 

Pictures inserted were shown as as slides during my time sharing. And, I modified this a bit so it makes sense when being read. If you’ve read most of my previous blog posts, you might have read one or two of the stories below.

FIND PART 1 HERE ____________________________________ This year, I’ve faced one of the biggest trials of my life, and it’s really made me evaluate what I want my life to look like, to ask myself who I want to be.

My second story— about birthday parties, car wrecks, and shots — began in July of 2016. My baby was just 5 months old. Throughout my pregnancy I had many physical pains, the worst was painful and bloody bowel movements. I was told that was hemorrhoids, and it was totally normal in pregnancy, and it would go away after my baby was born. When Catica Love was born, things only got worse.  

After I had been to my doctor multiple times for symptoms, my husband felt lumps in my abdomen. A few days later a CT scan showed cancerous tumors in my liver. By the end of the week more testing gave me the diagnosis of incurable, stage 4 colorectal cancer, that had spread to my liver and my hip bone. 

This is one of the darkest challenges I’ve faced, but this has also been one of the brightest years of my life. Battling cancer is one way I’m learning we can be in the worst of times and the best times at the same time. I’m learning to let blessings and hard times co-exist.

I’ve had extreme physical pains-

Days where going to the bathroom has been as painful as child birth.

Days when there was pain in my hip so intense I couldn’t walk.

Days when Ive been too weak to carry my baby to bed.

I’ve had to grapple with hard “what if” questions-

What if I loose my hair?

What if I don’t get better?

What if my daughter doesn’t remember me?

But I’ve had some incredible hidden blessings-

My family has visited more than ever.

People bring us meals.

I’ve received more words of encouragement through cards and emails than ever before.

My friends created a successful Go Fund Me campaign to help pay my bills.

Being on medical leave has allowed me to stay home with my daughter.

These dark moments and bright moments come together. Dealing with a terminal illness has caused me to look for light in the midst of darkness. Like most moms, I’d say One of the brightest parts of my life is my daughter.

Dealing with a terminal illness also makes me want to celebrate everything I can. Each milestone I get to celebrate with my daughter feels like a miracle. When she turned one, we had a big party. We have a small apartment, but we filled every inch of it with people who love Catica and love our family. Both sets of her grandparents flew out from Ohio for her party too.

My mother-n-law planned to stay a few weeks after the party to be a support through out my treatments. My dad and step mom left two days after the party, and a few days after that my father-n-law was leaving. To send him off well, we planned to get lunch in Japan town.

We packed into our car and started our trip. Just about three blocks from our house, we were pulling out from a stop sign and a fire chiefs pick up truck smashed right into the front of our car. The baby was fine, my in-laws were fine — they were all in the back seat.

My husband and I were both in pain. with me being on chemo (chemo can weaken bones), the EMT’s had me taken to the emergency room to make sure none of my bones were fractured.

Thankfully, I didn’t have any fractures. However, they incidentally found a blood clot in my lung. As a result, I’ve needed to give my self a blood thinner shot every day since February 13.

That nightly shot has been a real emotional battle for me. My dad has diabetes and I watched him give himself a shot of insulin most nights of my childhood. I swore to I’d never have to give nightly shots to myself and that I wouldn’t repeat my dad’s health problems; so at 12 years old I became a vegetarian, and by the end of Jr. High I was an avid exerciser. 10 years ago a doctor told me I was the picture of perfect health.

I had a pompous pride about the way I took care of my body. This health battle has served me a big slice of humble pie. I’ve become less judgmental toward others facing challenges that I can’t understand. It’s taught me not to assume that people’s problems are a result of their poor choices.  

I asked my oncologist over and over to just let me take a blood thinning pill, but the pill isn’t as effective for people on chemo. So, every night I give my self this shot.

At first I hated it. I was so upset that I had a blood clot despite continuing to eat right and exercise even while battling stage 4 cancer. I was greatly discouraged. Each night prepping for my shot I’d watch a mental video of my dad giving himself a shot. Every night, he gets his black cloth zipper bag, pulls out the needle, wipes a spot on his stomach with alcohol, stabs in the needle, and administers his insulin.

When I gave myself the lovenox shot I’d be thinking, “I hate this. I can’t believe I, of all people, have to do this. This isn’t how I want to go to bed each night.”. And then I realized I’d drive myself batty if I continued thinking like this night after night.

I really had to reframe my thinking. Like it says in 2 Corinthians 10.5, I had to take my thoughts captive and redirect them in a positive direction. I had to be glad the blood clot was found. I’ve had to force myself to change my inner dialogue— I began wrangling in my thoughts. I joke with myself that I’m one of the few moms who has a doctor approved nightly habit of doing shots before bed. After my inner comedy routine, I move to thankfulness, mentally saying,

“Thank you God this blood clot was found before it caused any permanent damage. Thank you God for this medication that prevents me from having a stroke. Thank you God that this shot is helping prevent paralysis.”

I’m really making choices these days about on what I’ll focus on.  In Philippians we’re told to fix our thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.- Philippians 4.6-8.

Like with my chipped tooth, I’m choosing to hope through pain. When I give my nightly shot it is painful, but it gives me hope to live longer. It’s a practice of controlling my thoughts. Taking thoughts captive and bringing them under obedience to where we want to be allows us to live in a way that EVEN THE DARKNESS IS NOT DARK  AND THE NIGHT IS AS BRIGHT AS THE DAY. DARKNESS AND LIGHT ARE ALIKE TO YOU.  Psalms 139.12

FIND PART 3 HERE

FIND PART 4 HERE

[seven-winter-trees]

food, disordered eating, trying to get healthier

so we’ve been talking with a friend about our health issues and our food issues and our nutrition issues and our body’s general digestive issues, and he’s been telling us about how massively his own health and his roommate’s have improved due to switching to a properly supported vegan diet.

he recommended we get some shakes for the times we can’t eat or don’t have any energy so we can get adequate nutrition. he’s willing to help us afford it since you can’t get that stuff with food stamps. 

stress makes us lose our appetite, and we do a lot of only eating once a day or every now and then skipping an entire day, which is bad for tons of reasons. if we can’t food, but at least drink two of those, we have plenty of protein and a lot of vitamins and other things. the ingredients are ridiculous. it has so much stuff in it that’s actually food.

particularly when you compare it to what we have been eating, which is often rice. 

malnutrition is fucked up - you can be severely malnourished while eating tons of food, if it’s the wrong food (lmao @ us eating mcdonald’s every day in middle school when we had our growth spurts - no wonder we’re the shortest person in our family next to our grandmother), and you can be severely malnourished from not eating enough food, if it’s the wrong food. 

there’s some happy medium, but it’s always been tough for us to work out with our spoons and everything else. a lot of healthy food is complicated/time consuming to make. we just don’t have the energy. maybe that will get better, but it certainly ain’t right now.

we’ve had disordered eating for about 17 years. it used to be really bad to the point of what would now be dx’d straight as anorexia. back then, it was ED-NOS because the dsm’s criteria was really stupid. “you have every symptom but you’re not yet skeletal, hmm, i guess you have ~some random disorder that we’re not going to take seriously~, even if half your hair’s fallen out, you’re severely malnourished, and you’ve lost half your body weight. no worries!” 

it’s less fucked up now. we’re not really doing anything intentionally or trying to punish ourselves. 

we really don’t like our body and looking at it really makes us unhappy, because we were put on antipsychotics for no reason and they made us gain 80lbs that we’ve never been able to lose much of. i’ve read several studies that antipsychotics can cause permanent insulin resistance and i know our endo treats some people for that specifically, so we plan to bring it up with him when we see him again.

we already take b12 supplements because regardless of our diet, our body doesn’t like holding on to it.

if our digestive system would somehow heal some and learn to use vitamins and minerals, that would be great, but until then i will keep throwing megadoses of b12 and d3 at myself to avoid the, “uh. your levels are kind of. critical. come in, asap,” thing that’s happened with us and blood work before. even when eating meat almost every day. 

with the vitamin d, it was sort of, “how are you even upright.” i have no idea. sheer cussedness, our family would say. even then, we have to take more than twice what they think we need to, and i’m still not sure if it’ll be enough. we’ll see next time someone orders blood work.

they want us on b12 injections at home, but keep forgetting to argue with our insurance about it, who think that despite self-administering intramuscular injections weekly since 2005 we Really need to have a pro do them. pls. that’s close to 900 shots based on the month when we started.

the practice was short a nurse practitioner and only had one doctor, who was out with health problems of his own for a while, so i don’t really blame them. we’re just taking some chewable stuff, rn, that doesn’t taste bad - sort of like cherry/berry bubblegum, that very fake fruit flavour. it’s the cvs brand. if our body cannot manage to find enough out of the 41k%+ RDA in each one, i don’t even know what to tell my body other than try harder.

also some of the people in the system will be happier. others, less so. 

for whatever reason, we have a lot of vegan or vegetarian people in our system. one of them comes from a place where eating meat is this extreme societal taboo and it’s only done when someone is incredibly sick. he’s never really adjusted to the idea. he’ll eat it at front, but if he thinks about it, he feels really weird, because he was dying two different times at home from infection and completely associates the taste of meat with the experience of what we now collectively have several personal experiences of having: sepsis. no sickness we have ever had has compared to just how bad sepsis is. the severe flu and strep with the fever of 107 was pretty bad, but we didn’t lay in bed and think really quietly to ourself in the middle of the night, i think i’m probably dying. we were dying.

the food we ate right before one of our previous bouts of sepsis still makes us nauseated to even remember. that was two years ago. 

[thecalgarybeet]

This week’s post about a really rewarding experience I had helping a friend who’s trying to put the plant-based diet into action. A few months ago I introduced a childhood friend of mine (Judy) to the whole food plant-based diet as a means to help her control her diabetes. My friend was encouraged by the amount of credible research into the effects of plant-based eating on diabetes and she became determined to make some serious changes to her diet. It wasn’t long before she set a new health goal to get off her current medications and reach a higher level of overall wellness at the same time. Well, I know my friend – she is smart and disciplined and she can do anything she sets her mind to, so when she told me she was struggling with the transition to plant-based, something didn’t seem right. Judy is an elementary school teacher and she also coaches a swim team 3 or 4 nights a week. During the week, she sometimes has 30 minutes or less in between jobs to grab something to eat! Judy also spends a fair amount of time on weekends grading student assignments or planning the following week’s lessons, in between attending to the needs of her own family. (No wonder she was finding the transition challenging!) It became clear to me after we talked, that her biggest challenge is her ridiculously crazy-busy work schedule which leaves her very little time to plan and cook her own meals. I also learned that Judy is unfamiliar with some ingredients on a plant-based diet and lacks a bit of confidence when it comes to using them in recipes. I knew I could help her with all of those things! These are a few of the things that I do best!

Read on to learn about Judy’s struggle with diabetes in her own words ….

After my third child (age 35) I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and the doctors noticed that my triglycerides were high. I also had polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and I was diagnosed with Metabolic X syndrome and told that diabetes was inevitable. That was 20 years ago.

I am now a type-2 two diabetic with progressively deteriorating blood sugar control. When first diagnosed and medicated I thought I could fix these things. Being an elite athlete in my teens and early twenties, I knew I could commit and I was not a stranger to hard work. I refused to believe diabetes was my destiny. I believed that if I figured this out and worked hard enough, I could lick it. That said, the doctor hadn’t given me any hope of improvement and I was put on medication to control my blood sugar in addition to the medications I was already taking for my thyroid and triglycerides. The only recommendation the doctor made was to lose weight – but he didn’t say how.

So I did. I lost, gained, lost, gained . . . and really, nothing changed. I have always believed that what we do with and to our bodies and what we put into our bodies matters. But, life has a way of interfering the best of intentions and my exercise regime went from 4 hours a day while training and competing in my teens and early 20’s to next to nothing in my 40’s and 50’s. Eventually, my medications were no longer effectively reducing my A1c blood glucose (it was continuing to creep up) so I knew the next step for me would be insulin, and I was terrified.

For years, I continued trying all sorts of diets. And they would work for a while, but in the long run none of them were sustainable. I was dieting – not making a lifestyle change. Around the time I was at my wits end and ready to give up, I was introduced to the plant-based diet and lifestyle. I began reading many convincing arguments about the benefits this way of eating and even more encouraging, about its potential to reverse and cure diabetes. I was skeptical but I really had nothing to lose and thought it was worth a shot.

Since January 2017 I have been moving to a vegetarian diet, and working towards becoming vegan. The meat was less of a challenge to give up than I thought it would be, but the dairy has been harder to give up. Cooking vegetarian and vegan meals has been stressful for me because this is completely unfamiliar territory.  And I would like to say that I am not an incompetent cook. On the contrary I love to cook and have made some wonderful meals. However, oil-free, plant-based cooking is a different beast and I have definitely struggled with that.

I have spent hours scouring a multitude of cookbooks, blogs and websites for plant-based recipes and found the process of figuring all of this out on my own, extremely time consuming.  I tried a few recipes from a few websites and books and found that they were either lacking in taste or that the recipes were complicated and labour intensive to prepare – at least for me. In March I enrolled in a free on-line diabetes summit and listened to experts explain the science and research behind the plant-based diet and I that was when I learned that the plant-based diet also had to be low fat – I needed to avoid all oils. That threw me for a loop! I was already struggling with the giving up dairy – how was I going to manage without oil as well!? The transition definitely wasn’t easy for me. My blood sugars were improving but my stress levels were going up.

By this time, I knew I needed help or this would end up being just another effort that too would fail.

That’s when I had a heart to heart with Carol at (https://thecalgarybeet.com/)                      

In my initial consultation with Carol, I explained my dietary needs, the problems I was having with transitioning to a whole food plant-based diet and we I went through my work schedule. Carol immediately saw that a big part of my problem, apart from lack of time, was lack of confidence and we agreed to an in-house hands on cooking demonstration a week later. A few days prior to that, Carol provided me with a list of 4 meals that could be made in an afternoon, would last me the week and would fit into my lifestyle of often “grab-and-go” meals. She took into consideration that I live in a house of meat eaters and the meals needed to either appeal to them too, even if only as a side. She also sent me the recipes and a grocery list so that I could look everything them over for allergies (one of my kids is allergic to avocado), and potential “ no ways.” Having the grocery list in advance was a huge bonus because I was also to check the ingredients against things I already had in my pantry and wouldn’t need to buy before the demonstration.

Carol even came with me to MY local grocery store. This was super helpful because she knows what to substitute what for what if your grocery store doesn’t carry something on the list – which was always a source of stress for me!  I can’t tell you how much time I have wasted driving all over town looking for specific ingredients because I didn’t know enough about the ingredient itself, and whether not it was one I could substitute. Being a professionally trained chef, Carol is intuitive in all things related to plant-based cooking and she is really comfortable replacing items on the list – either with ones that are less expensive or ones that will work just as well. (Sometime bloggers or recipe books will suggest using brands that are not available in my local stores, and as a newbie – if it says amino something or other – I would not know what to do if I could not find it. Lord knows I have sent my husband on numerous grocery scavenger hunts for items that were listed in a recipe but neither one of us knew what they were or what affect its omission would have on the recipe!).

The grocery shopping took less than an hour from start to finish and I felt confident that there would less wastage, which in the long run means cheaper grocery bills. On the day, Carol organized the order of preparation and we set about working in MY kitchen. We had to function with MY pots and pans, MY kitchen layout . . . this was more of a challenge for Carol. Where we were just cutting vegetables or measuring spices, Carol lent a hand. Where process or procedure was needed, I did a lot of the work. That was to ensure that I would have the confidence to repeat these recipes on my own. More often than not, Carol had to improvise with the pots and pans and utensils that I had and showed me how to make them work. I didn’t feel that I had to run out and spend money on new equipment or kitchen supplies!

Summing up …in an afternoon, we had shopped at MY grocery store, cooked and MY kitchen and prepared 4 meals (with serving options) as well as condiments that would keep in the refrigerator for the week, were nutritious and plant-based, used absolutely no oil and BEST OF ALL, worked with my hectic life style! And the food was delicious! All of it. And everything we made was a hit with my two adult omnivore daughters and even satisfied my carnivorous husband, though he will never admit it (but he had two helping of the quesadillas).

We even managed to fit in 3 oil-free salad dressings (forgot to photograph) to keep me going throughout the week – and these were not on our original plan!

The following day, I actually relaxed in my back garden because for the first time, dinner for the family was ready for my family. For once, I felt like I was ahead of the game and this was something I could do! The whole experience reminded me of the Chinese proverb, “You give a poor man a fish you feed him for a day. You teach him to fish; you feed him for a lifetime”.  My day with Carol showed me that a low fat plant-based diet and lifestyle change is a real possibility for me and I am no longer overwhelmed by it. For my particular meal plan I learned what to buy at my own grocery store with an eye on possible substitutions and fiscal management. I learned how to prepare the food in my own kitchen using my utensils and appliances and how to work in a time-efficient way. Carol really knew how to organize prep stations and our time which ensured that we achieved all that we had set out to do in an afternoon. I have four new wonderful meals to add to my repertoire and I am comfortable making adaptations where necessary. Interestingly, the morning after having eaten a very hearty meal of quinoa and roasted vegetable casserole, corn and salad, my blood sugar was the lowest it has been in almost 2 years. And more importantly, my recovery sugars after eating are falling within the normal range. I am still on medication but will be returning for an A1c check in mid-May. It’s early days, but I am very encouraged – I will keep you posted!

Transitioning to a WFPB diet This week’s post about a really rewarding experience I had helping a friend who’s trying to put the plant-based diet into action.