Temptation Won

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     Today I got my latest BAF (Body Art Forms) order! I am stretching my 14g seconds up to 12g (actually, they were already ready for the 12g size due to the earrings I had in them for the last month being prominent, and therefore moving around a lot). So that part was easy. Since I didn't really have to stretch my seconds, I decided to stretch my firsts. 8g to 6g is much bigger of an increase than 14g to 12g.

This is one of my ears with 8g tunnels in my first, and a 12g pincer in my second.  I switched from the pincer to a 12g tunnel after this, and then continued with my plans, which I tell below.

     I took my hot shower, and massaged my lobes with oil. I lubricated my taper and started to slowly insert it. Then it stopped, and there was too much resistance to risk pushing it (I could end up with ugly damage that takes a long time to heal if I try to force a stretch). I then remembered that the stretch from 10g to 8g had been similar, and I had to do it gradually over a couple of weeks instead. I have abnormally un-stretchy ears (and they like to shrink down quickly if I don't keep jewelry in them, too). I think most people will not have this problem.

     So... I got out the PTFE tape, and wrapped it around each of my steel plugs a couple of times. I soaked them in jojoba oil and inserted them. No problem. My ears are OK with small increases, but are not stretchy enough to go up a size at a time. (In case you're confused, 8g is smaller than 6g, these are measured like wire gauges). The last time I stretched, I could increase a little bit every 3 or 4 days, and I made it to 8g fairly quickly. I've since learned that I should wait a week between the small increases. I'm hoping I'll have no problem going up to 6g.

     I plan to keep my firsts at 6g over the summer, and then decide about going bigger (I'm thinking of 4g as the possible final size). I plan to stretch my seconds from 12g to 10g after a month. Then I will stay at 10g for the rest of the summer. In the fall I'll stretch my seconds up to 8g. That will be the final size for my seconds, as I think they will look nice at that size, and I have a lot of 8g jewelry. If I get thirds (14g), I'll have them done after I finish stretching my other piercings and they have had time to heal.

:)

Spicy Squirrels

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Originally written on May 3, 2012

     What!? I am sitting on my couch, looking through my front window, and there is a squirrel at my bird feeder. Eating hot pepper suet. Seriously?? I went outside to watch. There are at least 5 squirrels out there, and one of them is repeatedly climbing up to my feeder and eating that stuff! I thought they weren't supposed to like hot chillies.

     Maybe I should give up. I initially put regular bird seed in my bird feeder. It attracted mostly cardinals and squirrels. Soon the squirrels would empty the feeder by the afternoon. I switched to those white safflower seeds. It said on the packaging that squirrels don't like it. At first it worked! I had birds and no squirrels. Eventually a squirrel started hanging around eating the safflower seeds, but it wasn't too bad. Well, the last time I bought a bag of safflower seeds, I ended up with a group of squirrels, that indeed were eating the safflower seeds! They again were emptying the feeder by the afternoon, sometimes in only a few hours.

     So the last time I went shopping I saw hot chili pepper suet pellets. I was sure the squirrels would not like it. I mixed safflower seeds and hot pepper suet pellets together in my bird feeder. The squirrels took the whole day to empty my feeder, but I thought maybe they just dumped all of the pellets on the ground and didn't eat them.

     Today I put only hot chili pepper suet in my bird feeder. The squirrels were all there watching me. As soon as I stepped back a big female climbed up and took a pellet. I thought she did not like it because she made a very odd sound after eating it. Then she went back up and hung upside down with her face in the pellets. Eating them and making the occasional odd sound. Still, I think she may be the only one eating them. The others made a huge fuss climbing all over my windows for 5 minutes, and then left. That one squirrel is the only one still out there. Calmly sitting on my bird feeder eating hot pepper suet pellets.

     I do like squirrels, I just don't want them using up my bird feed so fast. I have thought about getting one of those more expensive bird feeders that squirrels supposedly can't get into, and then feed the squirrels separately so they don't try to find a way into the bird feeder.

     After all, one squirrel started eating the safflower seeds and others eventually picked it up, so I suspect the others might do the same with the hot chili pepper suet. Update: not 5 minutes have passed and there is now a second squirrel trying the hot pepper suet pellets. Now the two squirrels are squabbling on my window. I'm glad the claws on glass sound doesn't bother me, I suspect it would send some people up the wall.

A cell phone photo of a squirrel outside my window, with a hot chili pepper suet pellet in it's mouth.

:)

ETA:  I have noticed this is far and away my most popular post, which has made me wonder if my title has led people to think there might be a very interesting recipe in this post!  Sorry if I have disappointed anyone.  This webpage actually does have a recipe for squirrel.

CSA Farm Share Loss

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Bummer!

     I feel deflated. I just got news that the organic farm I buy my produce directly from is closing. Not just for the summer, but forever. I had finally gotten a space this year in this farm, after years of wanting to get into a CSA. Now they are closing.  They say they can not charge enough to keep going. That no one would buy the produce if they charged what they need to keep in business. I would have paid more if I had to, but I realize most people would not.

     I loved it. Gorgeous fresh organic produce. I drove to the farm to pick it up. It was so much fresher than what's in the grocery store. I could speak to the farmer. I knew that there were no odd freshness coatings on the food. It tasted amazing. I even liked some of the vegetables that I had previously disliked.

My first bag of fresh produce from the farm.

     I loathe the thought of having to go back to the grocery store for my vegetables. I know of one other local organic farm, but it is not having openings and the waiting list is long. I have no outdoor property to grow food on. I know there are a couple of organic farmer's markets around, but they are only partly local. I find plenty of produce in them with stickers. I want my vegetables fresh and organic. Picked fresh and in my hands. Not picked fresh, then cleaned and packaged and shipped to the area where I live, for me to buy a week or more later. I suppose it's back to the CSA hunt for me.

     I am doing what I can in my little condo. I have a small square foot garden on my patio, a half barrel of tomatoes on my front door step, and a small grape vine in a large container hiding behind the bushes in the front of my window. I put a bucket out when it rains to collect rainwater for watering my plants. I also have a hidden compost bin, hidden because my condo association doesn't allow it; and they aren't happy about my veggie growing, either. I suppose in the future they will probably change the potted plants rule to specify 'ornamental plants only'.  I can't wait to have my own land to grow food on.

     Back to the closing farm... Next week they are allowing their members to go to the farm and harvest whatever is left, for free. I will make the most of that. I'm going as soon as they open on Monday. I plan to fill my freezer with greens to use in green smoothies. Get my favorite vegetables to cook with. Gather delicious herbs... which I will probably end up drying. I'm out of dried catnip, so I hope they have some catnip left (no, I don't have cats, I'll explain why I use catnip in a future post).

     On the plus side, I did recently find a local source of fresh pastured eggs! Yay! I eat a lot of eggs.

:)

Update: I started aggressively searching for new options, and just sent an e-mail to a farmer. I hope it works out!

Another extra note:  I just realized that saying the farm closes over the summer might sound backwards to a lot of people, but I live in a hot climate, our growing season is during the fall, winter, and spring.

ETA:  I got a response from the farmer I e-mailed and it looks good.  She even said she will teach me to raise chickens free of charge (I asked)!

Spoons

-->I originally wrote this entry on May 1, 2012. That was before I started this blog, and as mentioned in my first post, it was written in the notes app on my iPhone. This post is more easily understood if you are familiar with 'Spoon Theory'. Spoon Theory is not actually a theory, rather it is a story that helps healthy people to understand the situation of a person with a chronic illness a little better. I am not chronically ill, but I identified with that situation before I figured out that gluten was causing my degrading health (and somewhat still identify with it while I'm healing). You can read the Spoon Theory story here: Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino.

      This is not normal. I live in Florida, I'm young, it's 78°F in my house, and I'm fully overdressed and under a cozy blanket and a comforter. No, I don't have a fever. I think I ran out of spoons. I thought, since last week I went back to a gluten free diet, that I could go back to my normal workout schedule. I had gotten sicker and sicker during my 6 weeks of eating gluten for my medical tests, and had to drop off activities one by one. I was highly optimistic that I would quickly recover and be back to normal in no time. I enthusiastically did a workout on Sunday, and then another one on Monday.

     This morning (Tuesday), when running up the stairs to get a shirt for my daughter, my leg muscles said “no”. They were exhausted and I had to walk the last few steps. I decided I didn't have the energy to take my daughter to school by bicycle, so I drove to the park next to the school and walked her there. Walking back to my car was exhausting. It was not far, only about a block worth of distance to cross the school building and the edge of the lake to my car. I felt like I might collapse. Thankfully I made it back home with no such embarrassing incident occurring.

     I managed to make breakfast for myself (a green smoothie and an egg). I know the ice cold smoothies make me feel cold, but I typically recover after about 15 minutes. This time I didn't. Twenty minutes later I was still shivering. I added a sweatshirt to my attire, but it wasn't enough. I crawled upstairs to my bed. First, I put my soft blanket over my body, then pulled my comforter over my body, too. That was a little better. I was still shivering a little, but it slowly got better. Now, over an hour later, I am finally feeling comfortable. I spent all that time shivering in a curled up ball under the blankets.

     Of course this upsets me. I think of myself as tough and physically fit. But here I am, weak, sickly, tired. How can I admit this to anyone? I have trouble even admitting this to myself. This shouldn't be me. All I can hope is that my gut will eventually heal from the damage eating gluten has caused me, and that my body will start to absorb nutrients better. Probably one of the biggest contributors to my scant energy levels (and previously unmentioned hair loss issues) is my low ferritin. I strongly believe the damage from gluten has caused my ferritin to end up low. I really hope I can fix it.

For the record... it was about 2 hours before I actually started to feel too warm under all of those blankets and could resume my normal activities, minus martial arts practice. It's been just over one month since that incident, and thankfully that was my worst 'shivering with cold' episode. It's all slowly getting better.

:)

Temptation to Stretch

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Originally written on May 31, 2012

Right now I have 4 piercings (2 in each ear). My primary lobe piercings are stretched to 8 gauge (8g). My secondary lobe piercings are 14g.

I started out like many girls do, getting my ears pierced with a piercing gun by a teenage employee in some shop. In my case, it was a hair salon in the small town I grew up in. I was 11 or 12 when I had it done. Later, around age 16, I got the desire to get second holes in my ears, but couldn't afford it. I split the cost with a friend and we each got one ear done. So then I had one earring in my right ear, and two in my left.

I loved my second piercing, but it gave me so much trouble. It was always getting infected and never seemed to heal right. So I let it close over.

Fast forward a few years, and I found myself being given earrings that would not fit! I didn't know what to do. I had never heard of earring gauges, or of stretching piercings. The Internet wasn't big back then either, so the thought of searching about what to do did not cross my mind.

Now, what I decided to do was bad, so I am preceding it with the familiar statement: Don't try this at home! Or anywhere, really. I took a bunch of thin sewing needles and, one by one, inserted them through my ear holes, blunt end first. I did this over several hours, but none the less, it did hurt a little by the end. I kept placing the end of the earring post over the needle tips until the fit was correct. I doused my ears in rubbing alcohol and pushed the earring posts against the needle tips. As the posts went through my ears, they pushed the sewing needles out the back. It worked! I was wearing the new earrings (they were Indian earrings, from my mother in law). 

Below is a photo comparison of a 20g earring and a 14g Indian earring.

I had to leave the new 14g earrings in for a long time. Even so, the holes would not accept me just pushing those blunt posts through (the posts were hollow and internally threaded, and the backs screwed into the posts). I had to cut little pointed tips out of plastic water bottle lids to insert in the posts to get the earrings in. After several years like that, my ears started getting irritated.  Possibly because I sometimes got lazy about using the plastic tips, and a couple of the earrings were slightly larger, approximately 13g.  I remember one day, after forcing in the 13g earrings, one of my friends pointed out that my ears looked red and swollen.

Then one day I was reading a forum page about piercings, and I was introduced to the concept of stretching, and of wearing earrings of different gauges. I learned that I had been wearing 20g and 18g earrings years ago, and that most of my Indian earrings are 14g. I decided to do something different. I decided to stretch my ears to 8g. I did it, again wrong, but not as wrong as I could have. I used pincers, and slowly inserted them over days until the centers (the fullest part) were in my ears. I would then leave them, held in place with tiny o-rings, until I felt they were healed, and move on to the next size. It was a very pain-free way to do it, but I did not really give myself the healing time between sizes that I should have. I also should not have used pincers. The proper way to move up in size is to do it (one size at a time, no skipping) with tapers and plugs (or by wrapping plugs with PFTE tape or Bondage tape a little at a time to slowly increase the size). 

About a year after I was comfortably at 8g, I began to miss my old second hole. So I went to get seconds done again. This time I did it right. I researched and found a good professional piercer. I was too scared to get pierced at 14g (what the piercer recommended), and had it done at 16g instead. The best way- with a needle.

In the end my piercer was right. I did like 14g better, so a few months after my seconds were healed, I stretched them to 14g.

My problem now is that I am itching for something bigger than 8g. 8g looks too small for the fat fleshiness of my earlobes. But then, I have so much amazing 8g jewelry, I would then have to stretch my seconds to 8g, which tempts me to go for third holes in my lobes (yes, there's just enough room for thirds, well spaced, before I hit cartilage). If I did that I would get it pierced straight to 14g this time.

So there is my problem. I am being lured by temptation. 

:)

My Comment Policy

     I am accustomed to YouTube, where I set my sites up so that only approved comments get posted. On YouTube I will post comments that I disagree with, but I will not post comments that are abusive or filled with foul language. This really helps to discourage trolls. I am happy that I found the option to moderate comments here too.  I have set up the comments here so that I moderate them before they are published.  Please do not be discouraged by that, and read my comment policy below. 

So, here is my comment policy:

I welcome comments that are nice, that are thoughtfully written, that are constructive or helpful. I will delete comments that are abusive.

For example: If a comment states, "I noticed a grammar error in your second sentence....(description of what I did wrong & how to fix it)", I will be thankful and will keep that comment. On the other hand, had the comment said, "Your grammar sucks", I would consider that unhelpful and rude, and I would delete it.

The same goes for opinions. You may disagree with an opinion I post in my blog and want to let me know you disagree. That is fine, as long as you write your opinion in a thoughtful and polite manner. 

Also, obviously, no spam.

:)

The First Post

This is my first blog post. I must admit that my intent with this post is to simply post something so that I can then work on making this blog look the way I want it to. I am new to this, therefore I may take time to get it right.

So, why don't I tell what prompted me to start a blog? It started with writing about how I felt one morning, in the notes app on my iPhone. I was having strange health issues that morning, and although writing about it did not make me feel better, it did offer some level of comfort. I liked that morsel of comfort, thus, whenever I felt like writing about something, I did so.

At the end of the week I noticed that I had quite a few short stories in my notes app, and when I scrolled down through them it reminded me of a blog. That was part one. Part two was that I recently joined Google+, and when browsing the features I noticed Blogger. That made it easy, so I decided to start a blog.

I suppose I should also give a proper introduction. I am currently a 36 year old stay at home mother. I have one daughter, and have been married for almost 15 years. I have a few college degrees (AA, 2 BS degrees, and a MS degree), and love to learn new things. I have never kept a job for long because I get bored with them very quickly. I did like doing research, though, and I was fine with teaching the lab class I taught for a couple of years. Research was the best, to me, because it had enough change to keep it interesting. That was in my past.  Now, when I am not busy with my daughter, I practice martial arts, work on getting better in horseback riding, paint or draw, and exercise. I am also learning to cook new things, because I recently had to start a gluten free diet. It will have to be a lifelong diet for me.

Now I am off to mess with the appearance settings of this blog!

:)