The Year the World Lost Its Entire Mind

Hello lovelies!

I'm writing to you from the middle of June in the year of our Lord 2020, a time in which all persons inhabiting our once beloved planet are absolutely and wholeheartedly certain of one thing: we hit the tipping point and tipped waaaay over.

Is it because of the rona?  No - unless you have hooked yourself up to an IV of CNN, you are easily able to see that the predicted terror ended up being quite a bit of an overblown issue (not to say that it didn't exist or affect people - it did, but not at the levels we were being terrorized with initially).  The rona was so like, spring 2020 and we are totes like, mega over it.  Figuratively and literally (if you hear of the waving of a "second wave" flag, I'm pretty sure it's because the media misses all of those clicks and the powers that be miss all of the diabolical levels of control they get out of bludgeoning the masses with the scaries.  That level of power is highly addictive.), quite frankly.

Is it the media-stimulated race riots?  No, but it is linked to that.

Is it ANTIFA burning down buildings and smashing windows with bricks and making a lovely tent village with speeches and dance parties for themselves where naked people run down the street saying that they are prophets looking for their children, proudly declaring that they aren't part of the United States (but rather, "Chazikstan"), while still using our wifi, EMS and hospitals for the drug overdoses, building (the very literal and social) walls (that they ironically hate and riot and terrorize about), and silencing any differing opinion?  Well, no, but that touches the fringes of it.  (And if you're mad about Chazikstan, I hear you, but just let them be for a couple weeks and you can have a front row to watching the inevitible rise and fall of a very sad social experiment.)

No, it is none of those things, and neither is it even the chaos of the liberties that people have allowed to be stripped away from them out of fear.

What is it, then?

It is the silencing of rational discourse with the rise of cancel culture.

Could it be any more in your face (literally?) to silence people symbolically by forcing them to wear a mask, stripping them of their identity, individuality, oxygen levels, and muzzling them while taping directions on the floor of their local grocery store, telling them how they ought to walk?  This is the physical that has translated to the emotional, out into the atmosphere, that is now flying around the internet-sphere.  And flying it is.

Over the last couple weeks, we have seen countless examples of the vocal mob crying out to crucify anyone and anything that they deem as inappropriate, whether or not the person's opinion was justifiably and/or intentionally offensive or not.  This crucifixion is not only social, by people declaring they are now unfollowing them on social media (OH, THE SEARING PAIN!), but it is an outcry to demolish their livelihood, business, passions, and future.  This is once again a physical parallel in domestic terrorism of the destruction and arson of physical buildings as a result of the emotional world.

What once was "only" name-calling (you misogynistic, transphobic, fascist, homophobic, sexist, racist!) and slander on social media as a result of differing opinions is now full-blown catastrophic destruction if someone is caught in the crossfire and dares to think for themselves outside of the popular groupthink that is making an attempt to burn through the nation. 

Why did that name-calling start?

Name-calling in this realm exists most often from people shying away from the difficult work of digging through something together in order to try to understand another viewpoint. 

You don't like what someone is saying and you don't want to consider their points?  Call them a name.  Block that conversation from going anywhere.  Feel much better about yourself.  Nod in victory at your obvious moral high ground.  Threaten to unfollow, share with friends.  Spread the virus of the inability to have an intelligent conversation over a subject with which you strongly disagree.  Never even entertain that any aspect of their point of view could be valid because you are busy not listening to anything they are saying, convinced of your superiority.  Such intelligence.  So noble.  So big brain.

What harm could it do?

That is the catalyst that has led to a college football coach grovelling and begging for forgiveness because he wore a certain t-shirt while fishing. His running back, offended at the sight of his coach wearing an OAN News Network t-shirt while fishing tweeted that it was unacceptable and that he will not be doing anything with Oklahoma State until things change. 

I just want you to back up one second really quick with me here.  A man went fishing at his leisure.  He wore a t-shirt with the emblem of a news network on it.  Another person saw it and threatened to quit working with him because of it.  The university said that they would not "tolerate insensitive behavior" such as this rude TV network t-shirt wearing fisherman. 

Please.  Go with me for just a second.  This is the United States of America.  You can dye your hair purple.  You can identify as a tree.  You can fill your backyard with rocks.  You can drive a car that has figurines glued to the roof.  You can dance the cha-cha slide.  You can play basketball at midnight in your driveway.  You can refuse to shower for a week.  You can wear a skirt with combat boots.  You can tattoo your neck.  You can name your kid after viruses.  Why?  Because whether you like all of the results or not, we have the freedom of expression.  We are entitled to our own opinions.  We have the liberty to come to our own conclusions and to express them within our free society.  (Yes, I'll admit - that's getting harder for many to practice as we are bombarded with propaganda for what and how to think, but it still exists.)

This bizarre example is not one that is few and far between.  The founder of CrossFit, Greg Glassman, was stripped of his position for tweeting the opinion that there were some that were taking advantage of the death of George Floyd and manipulating it (just as had been done with Covid-19) by his tweet that stated, "FLOYD-19".  Furious tweeters demanded his resignation, saying that he was racist, and then pulled his business partners in, demanding that they withdraw from their partnership (like Reebok).  Reebok jumped ship, terrified to be associated with anything that the masses declared scandalous. His history of funding and supporting people of color did not matter to anyone, nor did anyone want to open up that door to conversation.  They wanted to call him a racist and end him, and that is what they did.

Whether or not you agree that he ought to have tweeted that, and whether or not you agree with his opinion, it is still only his opinion.  It is within the realm of his freedom of speech to declare such things.  You don't have to like it.  You don't have to agree.  You don't have to be friends with him.  But just because you disagree with another person does not mean that they should be silenced and destroyed. It is the mark of intelligence and maturity to be able to have a conversation with someone that you disagree with, and it is the embodiment of a free society to be able to express your personal views, whether they be popular or not.

Another aspect of the danger of groupthink was displayed recently with masses of people displaying black squares all over social media in an attempt to gain traction to end racism.  Perhaps I have been fortunate to surround myself with people for my whole life who think the very idea of racism is absolutely absurd to hold and expressly intolerable - in fact, I've only been aware of a very small handful of people who have ever vocalized anything overtly negative about people of color, and those people were very old and are now dead.  I don't know any person in my generation who has ever leaned positively toward becoming a racist.  It is the very fact of why so many scurry from even the hint of any behavior that would be linked to it.  Am I a minority for that?  I don't know for sure, but I have a hunch that even if a person was closeting feelings of racial superiority, they would never dare express it because they know it is wrong and that it is offensive, as they should.

With that being said, though, what happened on black square Tuesday on social media did not necessarily lend a hand in the right direction to fight racism.  Instead, what it did was influence people to behave a certain way and to display a signal to others that they were not racist and that they were going to prove it.  Instead of being comfortable with who they are (knowing in their heart that they were not racist) and displaying it in real life, in action, in loving others as they ought, they felt discomfort that someone might accuse them of being racist for their sin of omission of not following the masses and what was trending that day by not displaying a black square.

Certainly there were many who were passionate about connecting to other races of people - and we know that they are because they live it in their everyday life.  It was already part of who they are and at the front of their minds, but I fear that the majority of people who posted that did so more out of the fear that others would think less of them if they didn't.  That is not fighting racism.  That is unthinkingly following the vocal mob.  If you need to prove that you are not a racist with a black square, maybe you need to do a little bit more soul searching and think deeply about where you are at and what you believe.  The whole world is better when you're thinking critically.

Where do we go from here?  I beg that you connect with people who don't think like you and who are not like you, not so that you can call them names or crucify them on social media, but to explore the other side in an effort to truly understand - to expand yourself.  I encourage you to shun cancel culture wherever you see it as it is the very epitome of silencing voices.  But most of all, I encourage you to think for yourself and to use the liberty you have to express your own thoughts. 

You never know, your thoughts and opinions might not be a scary minority, even if the media tries to tell you that they are.  But even if you do not hear many other voices like your own, if you're not you, what are you even doing with your life?  Who are you?  Speak up.  The free society deserves it.

Peace, love, and think for yourself,
Ms. Daisy

The Fear Factory

'Ello lovelies!  (Go back and try again in a British accent if you didn't do that the first time around.)

What a year so far, amirite?

It's been enough of a wild ride on the free-flowing, wavy scrolls of hoarded toilet paper, diving deep into the deepest depths of oceans of hand sanitizer for any of us to likely want to climb aboard the crazy train again any time soon.

I am sure that many of us have had significant time to ponder and reflect on many new things (including - but not limited to - what you might trade toilet paper for and if you were going to be adventurous enough to make your own hand sanitizer from your liquor cabinet).  There are a few things that I have been rolling over in my head and I thought to share one with you today.  Are you ready for a ride into my brain?  It's wilder than the life of a Costco toilet paper roll.

I think that if there was one emotion that could be collected and weighed across all of humanity starting somewhere in late winter, fear would come in first place.  In many of our lifetimes, we have never had to deal with something that had such a wide span, affecting so many all at once.  One day we woke up and schools were closed.  And then the next day, they were closed for the year (three months out).  The next day, people were afraid of airports.  The next day, people were working from home.  The next day, we watched Italy singing from balconies, locked in their homes.  The next day, we were locked in our homes and high fives and hugs were essentially declared illegal.  The next, they took away baseball.  The next, people started wearing hazmat suits and disinfecting their groceries.

There is absolutely no reason that you could have ever gotten to a hazmat suit and a pile of $37 N95 masks that you burn inside out in your driveway on the way in and tossing your Rice Krispies into a bathtub of bleach without being completely terrified of something.  Three and half months ago, if you would have done that, they would have called 911 and put you into a mental institution.  Today, you're asked for your bleach concentration recipe and stared at for your tremendously stylish hazmat outfit.

How did it get that way?  It was that a lot of people truly believed the worst of what they were seeing in the media, and not only that - they believed it was probably going to happen to them and to their loved ones.  Imagining dangerous things happening to you and your loved ones is probably one of the strongest catalysts for change and wild unnatural behavior that you could ever find on the spectrum of humanity.

As people dove in headfirst, the media felt the exhilarating rush of clicks.  They upped the coverage.  The clicks went exponential.  The media stood in their quarantined offices with their fingers spread out to the sky, eyeballs flickering, purple-blue electricity pouring out of their wrinkled fingertips,  voices suddenly strengthening, and erupting with, "No, no!  YOU WILL DIE! Unlimited power!" while launching Samuel L. Jackson into the sky.  In a few short moments of our life, all news turned into coronanews.  In fact, in the first few weeks, I saw an infographic that showed the amount of times a word had been mentioned in the news.  Ebola was in the millions over the course of the entire epidemic.  According to Sprinklr, a company that tracks language and trends and helps manage social media images and brands, just on one single day - February 28 - 6.7 million people mentioned the rona on Twitter and on social media platforms.

 Personally, I am not one who likes to submerge myself into the news machine.  I don't want to support the media getting ad revenue for their hysterical hype, leveraging the novelty of a pandemic to benefit themselves financially. As they play on people's vulnerability and panic, they push others into a downhill spiral, scouring the world to shock them daily with more terrors and horrors, digging up the most random one-off experience you wouldn't find unless you were on page 19 of a google search, and then making it front page news.

I don't know if you noticed this, but it seemed that all of the media everywhere only had about six stories to pick from to broadcast on any given day. No matter what news outlet it was, they were all saying the same thing.  It was like it was either completely lazy journalism (and I use that term very loosely) or otherwise a very united front to decide what stories were going to make it to your homepage.  Those headlines would sit on top, ready to be gobbled up by the eager clicking masses who had barely just opened their eyes for the day, and then re-spread in various degrees across social media, infiltrating every crack and corner of life, giving people the Next New Thing To Freak Out About.

(And then their cortisol levels from stress tanked their immune systems, and they worried more into a perpetual spiral, making themselves more vulnerable to the thing that they were most worried about. SLOW CLAP.  Awesome job.)

You can get people to do anything if you work up enough panic.  Rational, thinking, level-headed people will turn to bleaching their cereal boxes, turning their masked faces 180 degrees away from other's in terror, afraid to pick up a box of pasta without a gloved hand.  These small things are the proof that you can get them to do big things.

This is the place that we stand and wonder at society.  Where are you?  Is it possible that the media may have their own interest in mind?  Do you believe everything that you're told?  How much do you question?  What if you weren't afraid?  Wouldn't you like to feel that way again?  (I ask that knowing that there are some people who totally get off on panic, so even though it could be rhetorical, it isn't.)

You know what?  You don't have to watch the news.  You don't have to read the headlines.  You don't have to know every gory detail of what someone is putting out for you.  You don't have to wake up and throw yourself into panic and depression.  You can just do your thing.  You can avoid any scrolling through facebook.  You don't have to open it up at all.  You don't have to argue with those who disagree with you.  You don't have to read the news before you go to the grocery store.  You can just go.  You can go outside.  You can call your friends.  You can smile at people at the grocery store and interact like they are a human being instead of the Black Plague personified.  You can refuse to drown in it.

Do you know what happens when you do?  You feel a lot better.  You're not fueling people who don't have your best interest in mind.  You're not giving them power over your day and your emotions, creeping into your subconscious, prying one thing after another away from your once much happier life.  When something wild happens, you will be clearheaded enough to react appropriately to it, and not with a knee-jerk survival mode.

I just thought that you should know that you're not obligated.  Maybe you could try it for a day and see how you feel.  Or don't.  Whatever.  It's a free country.  Kinda.

Peace, love, and take back your brain,

Ms. Daisy

Was my spleen exploding? Or did I just eat too many seeds...

I'm sure that title is something you've likely pondered time and time again in your life, but if it isn't, let me just allow you in for the experience that I'm sure you have always wondered about, but seemed just a little out of touch.

A week or two ago I went on a nut and seed eating rampage.  I think I created more ways to get chia seeds into my body than should even be imagined, and then for good measure, I added in flax, hemp and who even knows what else.  Mmmm, taste the power of seeds.  Oh, I tasted them all right.  I put those suckers in peanut butter (because who doesn't want to do that!) with raw honey, in my kombucha, in shakes, heck, I probably just ate them like candy with the frenzied pace I was on.

Question: How long until I die?

Then, all of a sudden, I started experiencing some strange stabbing pains.  They would come infrequently at first (did I connect this with ridiculous volumes of seed eating?  No.  I just kept it up like a boss.), and then more frequently, with or without movement.  The pain was stabbing and took my breath away, under the rib cage, left side, left of heart.  I did what people usually do (or maybe it's just me), and looked up detailed anatomy diagrams to try to pinpoint what on earth in there was festering and exploding, and then, follow the natural thought progression, try to guess how many minutes left I had of life.

I was quite sure it was my spleen.  This is concerning because those little spleeny things in there seem important and my paternal grandmother died of acute pancreatitis at a very early age, and I am fairly certain that those two organs are bros, thus (logically) I was also likely on my way out.  Write up the will.  Tess gets the white and silver daisy tea cup from Lacko Slott.

Lacko Slott, sorry Swedes, I have no double dots for you.

 Bloody genetics!  

What's worse is that everyone is going to make fun of me for dying!  Right?  No, I know this doesn't make sense to you, but it really does.  Here's Ms. Daisy, all healthy, swimming every minute she can, doing organic triathlons, promoting organic tampons, drinking organic kombucha, eating all her organic bananas and rubbing organic chia seeds into her organic natural peanut butter with hemp and flax, and she dies before she's the ripe old age of 40.  See?  What good is eating that organic crap anyway, look how it worked out for the busted spleen lady!  I'm just going to sit here and suck down a bunch of Coke Zero and McDonald's and live until I'm at least twice her pathetic dead age.  Then they'll taunt my dead soul with, "YOU DIDN'T EVEN WIN AT MAKING IT TO 100."  

This will not be tolerated.  I will haunt you.

And then they'll do my makeup all horrible in my casket so I'll have to come back as a ghost and shut it so you can't look.  Do not even try.  I will spill your stupid Coke Zero so fast your head will spin.

Meanwhile, back on a different level of reality, I got to thinking that perhaps it had something to do with my ridiculously excessive consumption of every kind of nut and seed I could find in the house and maybe I should try just backing that bus up for a minute.  Huh, that's a novel idea.  I had to figure something out as people were starting to threaten me with the idea of actually going to the doctor (no).

The following day after my epiphany, I would say the frequency of my spleen explosions cut in half.  It decreased steadily after that and by the weekend, I forgot I even had a spleen.

Sigh of relief!  Who wants to think about those organs anyway!  Not me!  Back to the organic triathlons!

The moral of the story?  I am pretty sure there isn't one.  Wait, yes there is: Don't drink Coke Zero.

Peace, love, and bananas,
Ms. Daisy

Questions I Wish You Would Answer

1.  Why do children follow you when you are clearly walking into the other room, purposely away from them?  Do they have really bad skillz at reading social cues?  Or are they just trying to annoy you on purpose?

2.  Why do children get louder when you answer the phone?  Why does it sound like they are killing screaming animals when you take a business call?  ("I'm sorry, I can't hear you, it's just I'm standing here...in...a...um, nature center...where a wolf is...uh, eating a cat and a screech owl at the same time...")

 3.  Why do children pretend they don't like something that they like when they are grumpy?  You want grumpy?  I'll give you a big fat reason to be grumpy!  Did you just enrage the Mom Monster?!  Guess what?!  You just lost at life!

 4.  How much therapy do you think children will need from comments like, "Well, if you keep that up, I'll probably end up punching you in the throat/selling you to the gypsies/secretly moving to Italy/lighting that X-box on fire, so make a good decision please, thanks."

5.  How many times do you think you can feasibly answer the same question or say the same thing until you literally go straight up nuts?

6.   Is it wrong to record your whining child and threaten to put it on youtube?

7.  Why are the offspring of your own body so entirely and completely different from each other that you wonder if they have been abducted by aliens and given brain transplants?

8. Why is private school SO FREAKIN' EXPENSIVE?  It's not even that good!

9.  What time is the official time it is okay to start drinking ice wine on any given day?  (They sell it at the grocery store...no more need of Canadian vacationers...)

And the best thought: These are my monkeys, this is my circus, I only have a decade left to straighten it all out.  Awesome.

Peace, love, and of course everything is just fine, why do you ask?
Ms. Daisy

The NEW 12 Days of Christmas Song

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to laugh (because you can no longer cry) at the horrors of society, people use their creative minds to produce things that expose the insanely absurd in the form of traditional song.

What I am about to share with you does precisely this.

If you don't know Mike Adams ("The Health Ranger"), then you betta ask somebody!  He is a genius researcher scientist with his own website (perhaps you've heard of it - naturalnews.com?  I thought so.).

Here is his rendition of the ridiculous things available to our culture (and the even more baffling is the fact that apparently SOME PEOPLE must be actually purchasing this stuff).

So, enjoy (sort of?) this rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas.  And please, don't buy me the Gangsta Rap Coloring Book - I already have two.

Peace, love and don't be a zombie,
Ms. Daisy

Diseased EPI dog + my carpet = frenetic mad scientist

Repeat after me:  I promise I will NEVER EVER GET A DOG.

Great.

Why the angst?  Let's begin with the stench that is permeating my bedroom at present. I'd say it smells something like a bath of cat urine combined with sour diseased feet.  Yumsters.  That, my friends, is the smell of a dog with EPI (a dog who has a disease wherein they don't have any pancreatic acids and you have to digest their food for them).

The dog isn't even IN THE ROOM.  She's put the stench into the carpet.

For the last four hours I have been on my hands and knees forcefully scrubbing and convulsing over the carpet trying to get it out.  I have tried many things.  Many, many things.

Do you know what my husband says?  He says HE CAN'T EVEN SMELL IT.

I couldn't fall asleep a few days ago because it was so bad.  Dude.  He's like a mosquito that got used to jungle DEET or something.

It is not humanly possibly NOT to smell it.  I HATE bad smells.  More than most people, even.  It is some kind of whimpery torture for me to go through.  

As you know, I can't just go and burn filthy candles or spray essential oils all over the world to try to cover it up.  (I tried.  Not the candle thing.  I'm tired of painting.)  That just makes essential oil flavored diseased feet cat urine smell fill the room.  And that, if you can believe it, is worse than the original putrid vomiticious odor.

I began by pouring vinegar all over the place.  That works at about 90%.  Basically, you trade in the scent of barftastic for vinegar.  Yes, vinegar is sour, but I would stick my nose over a vinegar bottle all day long rather than get a whiff of that dog odor.  So I tried to scrub it out with some vinegar.  The stench returned.

Then I tried various essential oils.  This was the point that I realized that even though essential oils are great, they do not smell great when combined with vinegar and dog stench.  In fact, it is pretty much guaranteed an instant gag reflex.  Lemon, rosemary, mint, even grapefruit filled the air.  For ten seconds.  Then the stench returned to tango with the essential oils.

Then I poured rubbing alcohol all over the carpet.  This did work well.  It pretty much just burned out my sense of smell for an hour or two.

I found a Crunchy Betty recipe for a carpet cleaner that I thought I would try for the heck of it since I was scrubbing away with so many things on the carpet anyway.  Her carpet cleaning recipe is this: 1/4 cup vinegar (hello again), 1/4 cup borax, 1/4 cup coarse salt.  Mix together, dump on carpet, scrub like a maniac.  Let dry, vacuum up, wash carpet with towels.

It actually works really well.  Except now I was even more disturbed because my black dog has left many dog oil marks everywhere she has laid and I decided to go all neurotic on it and scrub the bedroom frenetically.

In my cleaning tornado I decided it would be a great idea to get nearly boiling water and mix it with Trader Joe's lavender dish soap on top of the Crunchy Betty carpet cleaner idea.

I have no more clean towels in the house but I do have a neck cramp.  And a bit cleaner of a carpet.

But if I suck in really hard and sniff, I can still smell the lingering stench of diseased feet cat pee.

I'm still waiting for you to come pick her up.

I'll pay you.

Peace, love and I wonder if I should have just went with a hardwood floor in here...
Ms. Daisy

I CAN STILL SMELL IT!!!!!

What the offspring doesn't break, the dog will destroy

I just wrote a post this week about how children and animals make your house dirty (and thus, my solution: paint over everything), but I left out another vital part of what happens when you live with children and animals - what your children don't destroy will be obliterated by the dog.

THEY BREAK EVERYTHING.

My husband used to say that his Dad used to say, "You kids destroy everything!"  

Apparently I am getting his "what goes around comes around" karma.  Thanks, honey.

(I don't even believe in karma but I'll blame it on anything that will make me feel better right now.)

Last night, child 1 (you know, like Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Seuss?) was all about watching a video and asked permission to do so.  We agreed that child 1 could watch for about 30 minutes.  What happens?  Child 1 sticks the DVD in the player wrong, the thing starts blinking error messages and I spend 45 minutes after the offsprings have gone to bed taking the DVD apart and rescuing the DVD.  Oh JOY OF ALL JOYS!  Do you know what I found in there?  ANOTHER DVD!  Sideways!  I feel like a freakin' leprechaun finding gold at the end of a rainbow.

This is why I keep a small book that I've titled The Broken Record in the kitchen.  In it, I jot down everytime something is broken, who broke it and when.  I should have started a few years ago, but it is a rather new invention so it only contains entries since November 2012.  I don't know exactly why I have this besides it makes me feel better to document such madness (case in point: this blog in general).  In it, I have some items like: mortar and pestle, miniblinds, scratches (and footprints) on minivan, lawn rake, stapler, van Gogh picture frame glass, fruit bowl, keyboard drawer on desk, mason jar, desk chair, letter tray, glass pyrex, lightsaber, whistle, glass plate, cars, window cranks, etc.

Perhaps you have no children.  Perhaps you have children and they are of the female sort.  If so, you probably think I am raising wild apes.  I can assure you that I am the most rule-following and rule-encouraging person and a 9/10 on the strict scale.  The fact is, they're something like wild beasts!  

Early this morning I came home from the pool and walked over to visit my garden upon arriving home.  I noticed that HALF of the back of my garden was newly and utterly destroyed.  The gloriously growing zucchini, cucumber and pumpkin plants were trampled to death, broken and flattened to the dirt.  

Look, dog prints.

Look, I'm duct taping knives onto poles and sticking them into the garden aimed at a 45 degree angle for anything that might decide to jump in.

No, I guess that was just the daydream I had after seeing my hard work obliterated.

Once more?  DO NOT GET A DOG.

And if you're all hating on me for saying such, I gladly offer my diseased dog to you.  I will give you a free cage, leash, dog food, dog pills, mortar and pestle (for crushing said pills) and whatever other accoutrements you desire for the care of the four-legged wrecking ball.  You can even have the special dog pooper scooper since her puddles can either be hosed into a deluge or scraped onto a flat surface for removal.  In the meantime, I will think of you and wish you'd hurry as I scoop the dung that the flies have so graciously and wisely decided would be a great starter home for their little maggot babies.

God help us all.

Peace, love and we're the only ones I know who RUN OUT of Gorilla glue before it dries up,
Ms. Daisy

Scary House Searching Adventures

Perhaps you have had the oh-so-good-fortune of being someone on the adventure for searching for a new house.  If you haven't, well, let me just tell you - you are missing out.  (Kinda.  Not.)

This takes the word "adventure" to a new level.

So we would love to move away from our ghetto in the hood and live where I can walk around leading a cow to pasture while I yell at the offspring  to stop chasing the chickens.  This would be lovely.

We expressed this interest to our realtor who had to work hard to stay in budget, but who finally called us up with something.  It was a lovely lot of five acres, right in the area we'd love to be in.  

We made an appointment and happened to show up a couple minutes before the realtor did, so we walked around the property and around the outside of the house to get a feel for it.  It would need a desperate amount of work, but it had very charming aspects - for example, a greenhouse built onto the side of the house.  Wow.  Totally love that.  My hubby walks into the backyard and it is so gigantic spacious humungous that he starts gleefully commenting how he's going to be able to hunt this property.  

The realtor pulls up and we start our adventure (she literally calls it this), up to the lockbox we go.  On the front door is posted a sign of eviction from the bank.  This property has stood vacant for a very long time.

So it is a bit peculiar to me that when we enter the house that I see, in the corner of a completely empty room, a quilted pillow and small blanket curled up in the corner.  I say, "Is someone sleeping here or something?" in a half-joking, half-weirded out way.

The realtor assures us that it's fine and that there are a lot of strange things left behind when people are evicted.  

Strange is a total understatement.

We walk around the corner to the kitchen and look at the counter.  This is getting weirder.  On the counter is a box of framed pictures of close ups from the 1970's - these may have been a girl's high school pictures or something.  Weird.  I look to the right and see...a golf putter (?!).  What the heck!

As I notice this, the realtor turns and in the other corner of the kitchen, we see what was once a pantry and the doors have been removed.  There is an enormous piece of ceiling (maybe 8'x8') hanging downward as if little trolls were using it for a slide and it is covered completely (more than a foot deep) with asbestos.  She says, "Oh!  It's asbestos!  Let's get out of here.  This house is not the house for you!"

We hadn't seen any of the rest of the house, and I really wasn't that interested in wasting my time, but I did want to at least peek down the hallway that had the bedrooms just to satisfy my curiosity.  

Everyone else was standing at the door, ready to exit and I quickly just walked over to the hallway entrance to peek my head around the corner.  The hallway had a room at the end of it and doors along the sides of it, so I could only see what was visible from the open door at the end of the hallway.  

Do you know what I saw?  Do you have any idea what creepmonster thing was there?! I looked to the opening of that bedroom door and inside of it was a hospital bed.  Um, getting weirded out.  My eye scanned the bed.  There was a messy pile of quilt on the bed.  There was a messy pile of quilt that resembled the shape of a body.

I said, "You guys, there's a hospital bed in here."

The realtor nearly squeaked out, "Oh gosh, get out of here!"

We quickly ran out of the door, locked it and got into the cars.

Our vehicles were in a circle drive - hers was facing the front of the house, ours was facing the road.  We are all seated in the car when we see her motioning wildly with her arms and with a panicked look on her face.  Hubby rolls down the window.

"There's a man in there looking out the window at us!!" she screams.

We didn't have to be told twice to get the heck out of there - neither did the realtor as we watched her black luxury car kick an enormous amount of gravel behind her as her fancy tires spun out, spitting wild showers of gravel in every direction.

Child 1: "I am NEVER EVER EVER going in another house again!  I'm going to have nightmares for years!"

Fan-freakin-tastic.  Especially considering this was the first house we've seen.

It's gonna be a wild ride, folks.

In case you're wondering, we didn't put an offer on it.

Peace, love and hang on tight!

Ms. Daisy

Haircuts = child torture?

Just finished up yet another child torture, oh wait - I mean - HAIRCUT session.  Really?  Is it really that horrible to get a haircut?

Is it painful?  No.

Does it take a long time?  Only if you wiggle off the chair and fall onto the ground.

WHYYYY is it so torturous to get a haircut, for the love of all that is good and decent, someone please tell me!?  Seriously.  It's like this:

Me: Your hair is getting long, I'm going to have to give you a haircut soon.
Offspring:  Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, whyyyyyyyyyyyyy, nooooooo!!!!! (Falling onto the ground, writing as if in pain.)
Me: Seriously?
Offspring: (no answer, still writhing around on the ground)

Yeah.

So what I usually do is make them sit on the front porch and get a haircut.  This means that they will have an audience of neighbors and are not quite as apt to pretend the act of having their hair cut is going to put them into a state of anaphylactic shock or straight on to death and paralysis (or whatever that is).  Downside: neighbors think I am torturing children out on the front porch due to the large amounts of squalking and flailing.

I used to try to console them and encourage them that their hair was going to benefit baby birds everywhere, yes!  The mommy and daddy birds would love to have some soft hair in their nest to welcome their baby birds!  Isn't that sweet?  Your hair will help the poor unfortunate wildlife.  But meh, they can't even hear this explanation anymore over their hyperventilating panic at the thought of getting a haircut.

When I gave haircuts to my eldest as a wee tiny itty bitty tot, I would have to do acrobatics to get this little yet strong-willed person to sit still.  This usually involved me straddling the said offspring over a folding chair with half of that mini-body through the opening in the back of it.  Ah, such fond memories.

Although the offspring are much older now, it is still quite as unpleasant.  I don't have to do straddling anymore, just a lot of, "Look up.  Sit still.  Turn.  Sit still.  Look up.  Sit still."  

It's more "sit still"-ing than you'd use in 90 minutes of church.

I do ponder taking them for haircuts, would that make it less horrid?  I suppose it would for me, but would they act like goofball sauce to a stranger?  It's less likely (although it is possible).  But paying for a haircut, yeeks.  The thought keeps me enduring the torture.

I suppose I am quite the only person in the entire world who has children who respond in such a way toward haircuts so I will end my rant and now suffer quitely in a dignified manner.

Sigh.

Peace, love and sit still,
Ms. Daisy

Biotics Research Corporation: on the bad list

You may remember a post a bit ago about my hubby being radiated (from a doctor-prescribed x-ray) and then had his blood taken and then was "diagnosed" with low thyroid function (What causes low thyroid function?  Radiation.  Thanks, doc.  Awesome.  I develop more and more faith every day in the medical community.).

So one of the main things that people have when they have issues with low thyroid function is levels that are too low in proper iodine and selenium.  The food-based selenium was a no-brainer, but I didn't want to mess with iodine levels (so I let my naturopath do that instead).  She prescribed a product from Biotics Research Corporation called "Liquid Iodine Forte".  Hubby started taking it, I didn't really look at it at the time he got it, but about two weeks later, I did look at it and did my usual reading of the ingredients.

What I found was EXTREMELY disturbing.

So I called the company.  

I was transferred to a customer service representative.

Me: Hi, I have a question about one of your products.  I have Liquid Iodine Forte here and the last two ingredients, which I'm supposing are being used as preservatives, are citric acid and sodium benzoate.  When these two are combined, they cause a chemical reaction changing the sodium benzoate to benzene, which is a known carcinogen.

Helpful Customer Service Rep: I still don't hear a question.

Me: (Wow.  Okay.)  Since this product was purchased through a naturopath, I am supposing that you promote your product as something that is good for you and helpful.  So, a question.  Do you think having a known carcinogen in one of your products is a good idea?  How do you justify that?

Helpful Customer Service Rep:  I'm not a scientist.  The scientists in the lab must have  a good reason for putting it in there.

Me:  Even though it's a carcinogen.  Okay.

Helpful Customer Service Rep:  So you're saying you have a concern about this?

Me: Yes, you could say that.

Helpful Customer Service Rep:  Well, you should talk to the person who sold it to you and they can tell you more about it.

Me:  (Smiling and squinting my eyes) Yes, okaaay, great, thanks for your help (NOT!).  Sounds like a good idea (false).  [Grab product and throw it in the garbage.]  Good bye!

So, as you can see, I was not exactly impressed with their customer service or their attempt at answering questions.  Nor am I really impressed with their product quality or their apparent lab skillz.  So if you ever happen to have to take some iodine, I recommend SKIPPING THEM.

Anyway, have a non-carcinogenic weekend and I'll catch ya on the flip side.

Peace, love and maybe you can fix your thyroid without swapping in some cancer,
Ms. Daisy

Death of a Scoby

Oh, the shame!

Do you know what horrible atrocity I have committed?  This is embarassing and dreadful.  My dear friends, I have...I have...killed a scoby.  Actually, a whole pile of them.

Let me explain how this horrible-ness happened.

So let's say maybe four months ago I was kombucha-ing in every direction, resulting in myriads of kombucha amounts.  I was running out of glass jars in which to contain it all.  This is somewhat problematic as I might have a slight problem obsessing over acquiring glass jars, bottles, etc.  Mason jars are a weakness.  And I was running out.  This conflicts strongly with my desire to live simply,  to be completely decluttered at all times and in general as I am employed as an organizational consultant.  (Let me just air out all the dirty laundry at once.)

So, obviously, I needed to stop.  Stop making more kombucha when we weren't drinking it at the pace my gigantic 3 1-gallon jugs were making it.  I decided to pause shop.  Keep some kombucha in those gallon containers with their sweet little scobies, and then also the giant pile of scobies in the scoby hotel.  I decided to come back to it when we began even making a dent in the kombucha supply.

We finally got down to just a bit left and I felt like it was time to start up a bit more.  I clambered up to get my scobies in their kombucha-filled jars, when, DEAR ME OH MY, NO, OH PLEASE, SAY IT ISN'T SOOOOO!!!!  But yes, it was so.

I pulled down two of my jars and saw, stuck on the bottom of the glass, a dried up brown sticky, plastic-y, hard as a rock, dead scoby.  Neglect!  Neglect!  Dreaded! The horrors!

Quick.  Run.  Go get the scoby hotel.  

Oh gosh.  No.

MOLD ON THE SCOBY HOTEL!!!!

(I guess I may have left these guys go for a while...um...)

All those scobies, dead.  At my hand.  From neglect!  

Please, my dearies, learn.  I cry out to you, LEARN!  You shall not follow my example in this - nay, learn what not to do and learn from these mistakes.  Several scobies lay dead, may this not ever happen to you and your scobies.

Check on them.  Give them kombucha.  Speak to them, name them.  Let them flourish and multiply.

Luckily, I had one jar that had so much kombucha in it that it didn't dry out.  I was able to make a couple new batches.  And now, I have learned.  May you never have to go through this painful experience.

It did suit my "simplify" attitude as now I only have about three scobies (instead of like the 300 I had before).  So, yeah.  The bright side?

Peace, love and love thy scoby,
Ms. Daisy

Fun with Thyroids

My hubby went to his physician for an annual physical a couple weeks ago (he’s the sort who likes to do that kind of thing whereas I’m the type who would prefer to secretly die of something without knowing anything about it), even though he totally has “white-coat” syndrome and gets stressed out about the thought of possibly having something wrong.  He was having some discomfort in his lower back so they ordered an x-ray.  As a regular practice, they also did some blood work.  This office advertises the attitude that they want to take the whole person into consideration.

However.

They ordered his x-ray first and then due to certain circumstances, he had his blood test the following day (or perhaps it was the second day).  The x-ray came back as no problems, but the blood test came back as having a high TSH level which is the signal that your thyroid is functioning at a low level.  This (obviously) freaked him out even more.

They told him he would need to start taking medication.

He asked them (good boy) if there was a natural remedy – could he exercise more to improve it, eat differently, do anything to help?  Their response?  “No.  The only thing you can do is meds.”

Reeeeeeeeeeeee-heee-heeeally? 

Well, poor sot, he’s married to me so that answer isn’t going to cut it whatsoever.  I began researching about the thyroid and what things affect it.  When I found out what the main issues are that cause low thyroid, I pretty much began freaking out.

Are you ready for this?

Do you know what are the main things that can cause a person to have a low thyroid? 

Let’s begin with the biggest one.  It’s radiation (in the form of x-rays, etc.).

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME.

Way to think whole person, Dr. Dumbdumb.  Did you seriously order an x-ray and then have blood work done?  REALLY?

Secondly, stress.  Good thing my husband wasn’t having complete and total anxiety over going  to the doctor at all.  Yeaaaah.

Also, if you’ve got low iodine levels or low selenium, you run the risk of a low-functioning thyroid.  Another factor is having a high toxin level (which is something the naturopath tested my hubby for a few months ago and he did have an increased level of toxins).

This is also in conjunction with a new “scale” of what is a good TSH level.  A couple years ago, you could have a TSH level of up to about 5.  This year the highest within the range of normal is 3.0.  (And yes, some people are saying those levels are still too high, but there sure are a lot of things going on here.)  One more thing, lack of Vitamin D (hello, winter in the Midwest, that does not actually exist).

So let’s get this straight.  Your thyroid can get wiggidy-wacked if you have a high level of stress, have been irradiated, have higher levels of toxins within your body and have low iodine, selenium and Vitamin D. 

Let’s just go through that checklist there for the hubby and check every single one off. 

So it was no wonder that his levels were coming back above the 3.0 mark.  I told him to go play outside in the newly shining Vitamin D, bought him some food-based selenium, sent him off for a check to the naturopath who gave him the appropriate level of iodine supplementation.  Guess what?  His energy levels have returned and the created problem is beginning to resolve itself.  He'll get his blood retested in a month or so to verify numbers.

If you’ve got a problem with your thyroid or anything else in your body, you should figure out what the system is doing, what will encourage it or damage it, what the auxiliary systems are to that problem system and seek to resolve it through researching those things.  The problem is that many physicians do not have time to go that in depth with a patient.  You have to be a medical doctor combined with a detective and it is much simpler to get your easy kickback from a section of Big Pharma and make people think you’ve solved their problem by passing them their favorite colored pill.

*cough*cholesterol*cough*

The disturbing part is that if I were not the crazy ol’ lady that I am, my hubby would have been on thyroid hormones without a second thought.  Why would that be problematic?  Because your thyroid will continue to produce less and less as you artificially give it more until you have a zero-functioning thyroid.  Let’s think about where we’re going before we run down that road.

Anyway, just a very up close and personal reminder that you are responsible for your body and even though your doctor cares about you, they just may be used to doing it the traditional way that includes pharmaceuticals when you may be able to completely fix a situation by going to the source from a different direction.

Think about it.  Do your research.

Peace, love and think outside the pill,

Ms. Daisy