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

My new Valentine sweets

Can you imagine what I asked my hubby for for Valentine's Day?

Can you even guess?

A new neti pot?  Nope.  Flavored kombucha?  Not this time.  Organic fair trade 72% dark chocolate without soy lecithin?  Already got it.

Oh, m'dearies, this time, THIS time, I've asked for...get ready for flabbergastedness - two bags of...prunes.  Well, I mean, not just ANY prunes, of course.  Organic prunes, naturally.

I am obsessed with prunes..  

woodstock-foods.com

I love them.

I run to the cupboard and promise myself I can just eat one.  Or two.  Shut the bag, shut the cupboard.  Walk away.  That was enough.

Oh but it SO WASN'T.

Just one more.  Just one delicious, chewy, sweet one more.  Make that two.

Oh m'gawsh, I'm going to have a bathroom party if I don't stop.  Aren't I?  Right?  Isn't that a thing? (If only I could believe the EU on this one...)  Daisy, get a hold of yourself!  Do you want to be sitting on the toilet for the next week?  Oh, that sounds horrid.  To console myself I shall eat a prune.  What?   NO!  Step away from the bag!

This is almost as bad as the 35 pounds of tomatoes episode. 
 Good heavens. Or...the fenugreek/maple syrup armpit obsession.  It's certainly along those lines.  Oh dear.  But what, pray tell, could possibly go wrong with eating two bags of prunes?

I mean, the EU has decreed (officially, I might add) that prunes are not a laxative.  I'm so relieved.  Except for the small problem that they are also the people who've decreed that water doesn't help dehydration..  I suppose you might not want to believe everything you hear... (But I do like their response - which was to challenge him who decreed such a thing to a prune eating contest.  Seriously.  The article is supposed to be informative but it's really just hilarious.)

Well, anyway.  I'd better run along now.  All of a sudden I feel the need to visit the bathroom.  Probably just coincidence, I'm sure!

Peace, love and take a back seat, heart-shaped chocolate box!
Ms. Daisy

p.s. I wrote the above post yesterday.  Let me just say that perhaps you ought to have one or two prunes and REALLY STOP.  I had to chug the kombucha to exorcise the screaming prune demons that were trying to slice the insides of my intestines with their talons for quite a while yesterday.  Good news is I feel much better now and probably am about four pounds lighter.  Silver lining, people, silver lining!

Supercentenarians...and you

So I'm sure you've just been dying to know what my latest obsession/interest is, right?  You've probably been sitting around at your kitchen table with your head in your hands, wrenching them through your hair - occasionally pounding your fist in frustration upon your beloved eating space while desperately crying out, "What COULD she be obsessing over today?  OH!  If I only might know!  I would feel that my day would be complete!  Argh!  I am robbed of joy, robbed!  Robbed, I tell you!"

You may now heave your gigantic sigh of relief because I am about to tell you.  

Lately I have been inclined to obsess over...bum ba da BAAA!!  Supercentenarians!  

They sound like super heroes.  Well, duh, 'cuz they so are.

If you're saying, "What the heck is a supercentenarian?", you know that I shall gladly tell you.

So, a regular centenarian is a person who has achieved the feat of turning a mere 100 years old.  My great-grandma was a centenarian - she was 102.75 when she passed from this world to the next and my grandmother (her daughter) is 11 months shy of her 100th birthday.  I suppose it's how we roll around here.

A supercentenarian is someone who is greater than 110 years old.  There is this organization that records and verifies the age of such people and they keep this list and it's all Guiness booky and everything.  You have to have three sources to prove your age that are recognized by an international body.  Other people who are not verified may have less than three - like just having your birth certificate is not quite good enough for these fancy people, they've got to do it up all the way in three separate directions.

Currently, the oldest person in the world is a man from Japan.  He worked for the post office for about 45 years and then after he retired, he decided to be a farmer until he was 90.  He's 115 (116 in April) and is reported to read the paper every day with a magnifying glass.   He says his secret is eating small portions of food.

The oldest person ever on modern history's record is a woman from Arles, France.  Madame Calmet was 122 years old when she passed from this life to the next.  If you know anything about Impressionism, you know a Mr. Vincent van Gogh and that he lived in Arles in his painting years while he was trying to get people to come hang out with him in that section of France.  You will be fascinated to know that Madame Calmet was in her uncle's shop when she was about 13 when Mr. van Gogh came in to buy some paintbrushes.  She described him as, "rude, dirty and unpleasant" and she disliked him very much.  If you read his letters, you can see that many people held that opinion of him during his time (except perhaps his brother - who was also his patron).  

She celebrated her 121st birthday with a little champagne and was reported to eat about 2.2 pounds of chocolate a week. 

Once, someone said to her something along the lines of "Perhaps I'll see you next year?"  (She was about 115 at the time.)  She said, 'What's the matter with you?   You don't look sick!"

All of these people had something in common - they had an outgoing personality, many had/have a good sense of humor and they all tried new things and found enjoyment in life.  Madam Calmet took up fencing when she was EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS OLD.

What is says to me is that they were actually living their lives instead of waiting to die.  I suggest to you that you do the same.  At best, you may one day join the supercentenarian club - at worst, you will have spent your life enjoying it, others and learning about piles of things all over this blue and green planet.  

I'd say that is no loss either way.

Peace, love and get out there and enjoy it!
Ms. Daisy