Dressing: complicated mystery NO MORE!

I went to Trader Joe’s yesterday and my mother-in-law also was doing her shopping.  We meandered over to the pre-packaged salad sections where they give you tasty creations in plastic take-along containers.  They also come with a dressing to suit the occasion.  She handed one over to me for inspection (I am sort of known as the litmus tester for all things food – well, that’s what I think of myself as, anyway.  I am pretty sure other people just think of me as the dark cloud of doom for all things food.  Yes, well.  Either way.) as she brings them along with her to work during the week.

Being the Dark Cloud of Doom that I am, I told her that the actual salad was fantastic but the dressing that they had to go with it was pure horrid.  The first one she handed me had some nice canola oil in it (if you are not yet aware, canola oil comes from something called a “rapeseed”.  Yes.  RAPEseed.  I wish I were making this up.  Oh, and besides the name, it’s one of the top four GMO’s of our world.  Canola isn’t even fit for human consumption but it’s purported as a health food.  Someone has it in for us, perhaps?  But don’t take it from me – do some research and reading on the subject and you’ll be equally horrified.).  She took it back, sighed, tossed it back onto the refrigerated shelf.

Out comes another for me to inspect.  Ugh.  Soybean oil.  Once again, top four for GMOs.  (They are: corn, soy, canola and cotton in case you’re keeping track – with sugar beets following closely behind.)  Now, not only are soybeans one of the top GMOers, they are also not processed well by humans unless they are fermented (as they are used in Asia) and then only as a condiment with other foods, not as a food itself.  The makeup of soy causes so many problems – the huge hit is taken by your endocrine system, should you choose to consume it.  And it, like the other GMOers, is hard to get away from because they are so prolific in our food supply.  I inform her of these things.  She sighs again and tosses the plastic bin back on the shelf.

The third comes out and this one also has some canola in it.  Poor lady.  I am nearly deflating her with troubling information.  Now, as I mentioned at the first, the actual salad doesn’t have anything wrong with it per se, it’s just the ingredients to the dressing.  I suggest to her that she simply make some dressing and use the rest of the ingredients.

(Now, to be fair, Trader Joe has told me that they do not use GMO sources.  I am glad for that but wouldn’t consume regular soy or canola anyway, so I’m back to where I started.)

“Make dressing?”  She says, somewhat incredulously.  “I don’t know how to do that!”

Herein lies the problem.  I am not sure where you are, but here in these United States, people picture dressing and up comes an image of Paul Newman’s or Brianna’s or (oh please NO) Hidden Valley Ranch (you know I just DIED writing that) on their local grocery shelf.  Nobody knows (okay, not NOBODY, but fairly close to nobody) that you can make dressing in about four seconds with things you already have in your cupboard.

Our easy-living world has made it so that people are even deceived about making a simple salad dressing – that it must be difficult, complicated and filled with ingredients they certainly don’t have in their home.  Now this is actually true if you were trying to use the ingredients of a commercial dressing – what, with all that TBHQ and BHT and partially hydrogenated poison oils and stuff.  You simply don’t have those lying around the kitchen.  Now if you worked in like a poison factory or something, you could def get your mitts on that, but really, only a handful of people work at poison factories that I know anyway, so it’s not that common.  Anyway, I’m pretty sure you’d like to do without those things.  Unless you like boiling cauldrons and butane and plastics and stuff for your salad (hello, scarypants.).

So, what to do, what to do.  I know.  How about some simple recipes for dressings that you can make up in a jiffy?  Excellent.

Here’s one I had on my snack (a baby greens salad) last night (and just so you know, I really don’t usually think of salad as a snack, but I was so influenced by Martha Stewart making like five different kinds of veggies on her show that I couldn’t resist going to the kitchen to get me’self a bowl full of greens.).  All I used was: olive oil, good quality balsamic vinegar, a drip of raw honey and a twist of salt and freshly ground peppercorns.  It was zero percent difficult and it was fabulous.

As far as exact measurements, I have not the slightest idea.  What shall ensue is my best guess.

Ms. Daisy’s Dressing (for two servings)

1/8-1/4 cup olive oil

3 tsp. balsamic vinegar

A blob of honey (1 Tbsp.?)

A crunch of celtic sea salt

A crunch of black peppercorns

Combine and shake it, c’mon, c’mon, shake, shake it.

I have another dressing that I like to use, but I didn’t make it up myself.  I had it first about 8 years ago at a baby shower and it was heavenly.  You could pretty much eat it like soup.  But you would get so sick because who in their right mind would eat dressing like soup?  I digress.  The ingredients:

A Baby Shower Dressing, modified by Ms. Daisy

½ cup mayonnaise (you can use your homemade version or the grocery store standby)

¼ cup cream

¼ cup sugar or honey (you can mess with this proportion as you like it)

1 Tbsp. sour cream

2 Tbsp. Poppy seeds

2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar

Combine these lovely ingredients in a jar, shake it until your arm hurts and all is mixed.  If it is looking too thick, add a few drops of water until it is your desired consistency. 

Either one of these are fantastic for a mixed greens salad.  My grandmother-in-law hates eating salad but will eat bowlfuls of it if she can have this dressing. 

There are so many more dressing recipes out there and I think you should do yourself a favor.  Run out of what you’ve got and get stuck with making something from scratch.  You’ll be so pleased with yourself that you actually know how to do it, you’ll enjoy your salad all the more. 

Try it, you just might like it!

Peace, love and pass that salad bowl, please,

Ms. Daisy

Watch the windows, lovies.

Okay, okay, I admit it. I watch TV on Thursday nights. Oh, the horror, right? It’s a vice, I know. I could give it up anytime (says the addict?)! But I so like to laugh and there’s a bit of comedy on that night.


Anyway.

Since I was watching a network station, they fill their in-betweenie minutes with loads of commercials. I do not have fancy DVRing going on, so I am succumbed to patiently wait through them until the show comes back on. I saw some of those commercials (because really, who can sit still during a commercial, it’s the perfect time to go make toast, obviously) on and off and I must say, DUDE. WHAT THE HECK.

If you’ve heard the wild news lately, everyone is fighting about gun rights and whether or not the second amendment to the United States constitution should be eradicated or modified. Many people are very passionate about this – and I believe it is right that they ought to be. Let’s face it – bad guys are always going to get their hands on guns and other weapons. You might as well have a fighting chance.

Wherever it may be that you stand on that issue, that is not my point for today. (I apparently just wanted to get your blood pumping and freak you out for a minute, I guess. Did it work? Are you all high-blood-pressure-y now? Sorry.)

My issue has to do with these insane commercials for movies and other adverts. Try this – if you ever are up for an experiment, say what you see as commercials roll along. Last night, it would have been something like this:

Gangster, gun, punching, lipstick girl, kicking, shooting, more shooting, more gangsters, shooting people, explosions, shooting, driving off of a cliff, shooting people, gangsters, alcohol, shooting at people, punching, shooting, making out, shooting.

That’s just one commercial for a movie.

The next one and the next one are pretty much the same, in different order and you could swap out gangster for undercover police officer, army dude, bank robber, whatever the other minor theme of the movie is, since apparently the major themes of movies are “shoot people”.

I am not really a person who favors the banning of anything (even though I think our society would benefit from an absence of these movies). I think legalizing things actually reduces crime (blood pressure rising yet? Wow, it worked again!). Don’t freak out. It’s just my opinion. You can have yours, too, I’m just making a point, which is this: shouldn’t we be at least a little (if not more) concerned about what we’re putting into the HEADS of people as much as what we’re putting into the HANDS of people?

Rocket. stinkin’. science, baby.

Seriously. Watch a commercial (if you dare). Vocalize what images they are showing. It’s wiggidy wacked, f’realies. (These are interspersed with drug commercials whose side effects include suicidal tendencies, depression, mood alteration, etc. GREAT PLAN, ya’ll.)

It’s just something to think about, if you’re feeling up for it.

If not, you probably just need to take a pill or something.

Er, wait.

Crap.

Peace, love and protect the windows of your soul, m’dears,

Ms. Daisy

Healthy Herbal Remedies for Sick Season

Hello, me hearties!  Today’s topic came about because I’ve had two phone calls from friends in the last week regarding the same issue: the ugly, the dreaded, the hideous…strep throat.  My friends called me to see if I might have some herbal remedy to get them (and their littles) through.  With this in mind, I’ve put together some ideas for you this winter as you’re threatened with sore throats, colds, and whatever other kind of nasty thing buzzes around hopping from place to place through the cold months.

I am not a doctor, I am not an herbalist (“a” herbalist for the UK-ers as you prolifically pronounce the “H”) and I barely play one on TV (my Grandma's podiatry office thinks I am secretly Charlie from Revolution, they swear she is my twin and take pictures of me to send to their spouses.  No autographs, please.), but I’ve read up on such things and have a few ideas.

Let me begin by saying that strep is horrid and you don’t want to mess with it.  If you are concerned, you get thyself to your appropriate health care provider.  I am not giving you physician advice.  I am merely relaying information to you that may be useful in a stressful strep-throaty or other time of unwell-ness.  So, basically, don’t sue me, I’m only here trying to help.  Thanks.

Now.  Down to business.

This first bit of help comes via my 99 year-old Grandmother.  Yes, I said 99.  Her mother before her was only 102 when she passed from this life to the next.  I guess she might know a few things about life and this here world and this one comes hot off the presses from true vintage old-fashioned remedies.  This will help you bust through your symptoms and if you have a regular old horrible torturous sore throat, it will eradicate it in a few days.  I have not tried it yet with the strep variety, but I know it will help the symptoms of the generic awful sore throat type.

It is simply this – get a coffee mug, cover the bottom of it with a very thin layer of salt.  I go for the kosher salt, personally.  Fill up about 1/3 of the mug with distilled white vinegar.  Fill the rest of the mug with the hottest water you can ever think that you might possibly be able to bear.  Stir the concoction until the salt has dissolved and gargle that beast of a thing until you’ve emptied the mug.  You can do this as often as you need to.  I often find that at the end of this horrible taste combination (to me, anyway) is the benefit of actually having relief from the aliens who are living in my throat, ripping out the insides of it with diamond-tipped daggers and pencil-sharpened talons.

If you’re wondering why on earth this disgusting mix works, it is because of the two components and their vicious trauma that they inflict on the bad-guy germs.  There is a theory that holds that germs/bacteria/things unfriendly to your body flourish in an acidic pH environment.  An alkaline environment is inhospitable to them and makes them curl up into little balls and cry themselves to sleep.  Or something like that.  It is essentially a chemical onslaught of shock and awe to those nasties.

The other aspect, the salt, is the physical bully in the fight.  At a near molecular level, NaCl (table salt) is very angular and sharp-edged.  These are the lances, the daggers, the swords, the light sabers and the fists of the mini-world of germs.  They do physical damage to the nasties, rendering them broken, sliced, decapitated and decimated.  Good for you, bad for them.

The combination is a dual assault on the nasties-front.  One point for the good guys.

Now some of you are reading and saying, wuh-wuh-wuh-wait a miiiiiiiiinute!  Why don’t you just go get some antibiotics and get it over with?  Yes, I know.  Antibiotics do kill the bad streppies (and the other nasties), but some people don’t want to go that route.  They want to avoid that if possible to attempt to keep their immune system stronger, etc.  The long-term effects of repeated antibiotic use are disturbing (with all those super-germs and what-not) and some people nearly prefer the consequences of an illness to the possible consequences of taking prescription drugs.  I am not saying that antibiotics are always the devil, but they really aren’t always Superman, either.  (I thought I might explain, just in case you were wondering why on earth I hadn’t suggested this idea in the first place.)  Antibiotics are a whole post in and of themselves for another time.

Meanwhile, back to the topic.

Sometimes you’ve got drainage with the sore throat thing – and if that’s the case, you better grab your Neti pot and clean that junk out.  If you only have a blue plastic one, okay, but think about investing in perhaps a stainless steel or ceramic one.  Antibiotics aren’t quite the devil, but plastic quite IS. 

Next.

Thyme is a natural herb used to treat inflammation.  (I actually steep thyme in witch hazel for a facial astringent to rid me of zit-ification.)  When I had a crazy sinus infection, I took Fenu-Thyme and holy cowzers, that worked like a charm.  It also made me smell like I was eating pancakes out of my armpits, but that’s another story.

So check your local health food store for that herb mix capsule.  Don’t go mixing stuff up yourself – herbs are very effective and I don’t want you getting sick from being haphazard and trying to wing it.

My naturopath had something called “Throat Spray”.  I didn’t get it because I haven’t needed it (yet), but that might be something you want to check out.  Great name, eh?

Another great help is garlic.  Yes, you might like garlic bread, but I’m talking go ballistic on the garlic.  Roast up an entire clove and pop that sucker in your mouth like it’s a Godiva truffle.  You may end up smelling like a train wreck, but that baby is powerful and you will feel better.  It can also be used preventatively, if you’re feeling just the eensiest bit like you might be coming down with something, hit it and you’ll be free and clear of the nasties (and probably other people since you may end up reeking, but at least you’ll feel well enough to go to the ball, Cinderella.).

Something you DO NOT want to do WHATSOEVER AT ALL is to consume sugar in any form.  Stay away from the bacteria’s food like it is the bubonic plague.  If I am ill’n, I do not drink juice, eat ice cream, inhale truffles, put syrup on my pancakes, eat sauce that contains sugar, sneak a cookie, or any form of the likes of that.  Neither aid nor abet the enemy.

Some people have had good results with a combination of honey, cayenne and garlic.  I am so overcautious that I’d say yes to the cayenne and garlic and skip the honey because it is sweet and I would be scared I might feed the nasties.  Yes, I know, honey is anti-microbial and has wonderful properties, but I just personally go ultra-cautious on it and avoid it (since it’s in the sugar family) while I’m not well.  Maybe that is idiotic, but that’s how I roll.

Something you can do to help build your immune system is to make some Bieler broth.  It’s not broth in a traditional sense (because I think most people think of chicken/beef/bone, etc. when they think broth and this has none of those things).  This is a combination of green veggies, somewhat steamed and put through a blender.  You use the water it was steamed over so you are not losing any of the nutrients.  It is made with zucchini, green beans, celery and parsley.  Basically, you steam up some zucchini and green beans until they are ultra-bright green with an eensy bit of water.  Put the celery and parsley in as almost an afterthought for a minute-ish then dump the entire pot into your blender (water included) and turn it into green sludge.  If you’re doing it the true Bieler way, you don’t use salt, pepper, seasonings or anything.  You just pull up your big girl undies and grin and bear it.  I can tell you that this crazy green “soup” works like nobody’s business.

Another idea – kombucha.  If I am feeling a little off, I drink a glass of kombucha and I feel better.  This boosts your immune system and also fights on the side of alkalinity, so you get some extra bonus in there.  This is great if you are having belly trouble.  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve felt a bit odd in the gut and chugged a cup, made myself sit down on the couch and relax for half an hour and been back to my running around spaztical self within the hour. 

Another immune booster and cough calmer – elderberries.  A lot of health food stores sell them in dried form.  They look like tiny peppercorns.  You can make a cough syrup/immune booster with these little powerhouses.  Dump in a tablespoon or so into boiling water and steep like tea.  You can grate some ginger into it for your throat.  Some people make it last longer by adding some alcohol as a way to preserve it.  I keep this concoction in the fridge.  A lot of people add raw honey to it, also.  My favorite, Crunchy Betty, has a recipe for you!

Anyway, I hope that you do feel well throughout the winter (summer for my dear Australians), but if you don’t – see if you might feel a lot better using stuff you’ve already got in your cupboards.

However you slice it, be a good advocate for your own health.  Don’t sit back and treat it like a train ride.  Research, read and become well-informed so you can hop the bench and get in the driver’s seat.

Be well, my friends!

Peace, love and may you have victory over the nasties,

Ms. Daisy

Eat Yer Vitamins

A phrase I say perhaps thirty times before 8:00 a.m. is, "Eat your vitamins."  This is because my offspring leave their mini-pile next to their egg and toast pretty much daily until I say it in varying degrees with multiple accents and to the tunes of different songs.  This culminates in me saying, "Put it in your mouth or I will put it in your mouth for you."  Somewhere along this continum the small people decide to ingest their oh-so-loved vitamin friends in the shapes of bears, lions or balls.

Now - as an adult, you don't have that fantastic mommy head blabbing on reminding you that you ought to eat your vitamins.  (So sad, eh?  You could get your mum to say it and record her and it could be your tea-timer or something...just an idea.)  Or you could just do it yourself because you are so wise and lovely and responsible.

But, pray tell!  What kind of vitamins are you taking?  I would submit to you that unless your vitamins are food-based and naturally occurring, you might as well be poking your finger in your eyeballs for fun.

Is there really a difference, say you?

There REALLY is, say I.

How can you tell what's in them or where they come from?  Ready?  You're going to be shocked - read the label.

(You've never heard me say that one before, eh?  Exactly.)

And if that doesn't work, call.  Look up the company name, find a contact number and call their customer service and ask.  If they say things like, "I have no idea, um, um..." - THEY AREN'T MADE OF NATURAL THINGS.  

So you're like, what's the diff?  Who cares if it was made in a lab?  Isn't it the same thing?

Have you ever been sick from eating vitamins?  As in, you took your vitamin and within fifteen minutes you're either on the verge of vomiting or you really do barf it out.  Has that ever happened?  

Okay, so do you know why that happened?  When you get something so wiggidy-whacked in your body, the wise designer of your body made it so that it would go on auto-reject and expel it in the most efficient way possible.  In this situation, it's usually up, up and away.  If you do not expel it, you may just feel nauseous for the whole morning.  Great.

So here's the deal.  Back in the early-middleish of the last century, scientists were all gung-ho to break things down to their smallest known part and try to rebuild things in their own way.  If they could simulate things found in nature, they wouldn't really have to rely on nature (for one thing) and secondly, they could make serious boku bucks on it because they could patent it and tell everyone about their "invention" and do their own thing, making their own moolah.  I mean, you can't really patent an orange - well, unless you're in the GMO business, I guess (sickos!).

This is the history of aspirin, actually.  Dr. Bayer broke down the lowest common denominator of naturally occurring painkillers (like white willow bark) and rebuilt it, put it in a tablet and sold it as a wonderdrug.  Just think of where we'd be today without painkillers.

In the forest gnawing on tree bark, I guess.

But I digress.

The problem with lab-created things is that your body does not recognize them.  They're like a foreign language.  Es como, por ejemplo, empiezo hablar en espanol y ustedes solo comprenden el ingles - o aleman.  No saben nada de lo que digo.  Es lo mismo.  Entiendes?  Ojala que si.  Got it?  Exactly.  It's like bouncing off of your forehead and not going in.  Y si me entienden, pues, es como algo en svenska - jag alskar dej saa mycket, min bastis kompis!  Du ar saa popular.  Jag ar fran fiskafaren.  And that doesn't even make sense in that language.  (Except to you, bastis!)

Your body does the same thing.  It basically says, "WHAT THE CRAP IS THAT??" and barfs it out.  Or, in the case of water-soluble vitamins, it just gets urinated out.  This is exactly what you need: expensive pee.  Maybe it would help your garden, now that I think about it.  Just be sure to "water" your garden with it if you'd like to go that route.

But in the case that you are not interested in becoming a human fertilizer machine, maybe you ought to rethink what vitamins you're consuming.

I would recommend one that even had a bit of a probiotic in it.  They help get all that flora and fauna (?) sorted out in your intestinal tract so you don't have problems (let me tell you, you ought not be troubled in that area - you can cause serious problems for yourself if you do).  The probiotic helps give you a balance with your...elimination of used-up resources.  Ahem.

I like the Garden of Life brand, personally.  They have both food-sourced (and naturally occurring) vitamins and minerals combined with a probiotic.  They have vitamins specifically made for women, men and children - seniors, pregnant women, the whole nine.  I'm not paid to say this about their company (or any other I talk about) nor do I receive benefits from doing so, I'm just pointing you to an example that has helped me personally. (But it would be SO COOL if they did.  Hey - Garden of Life - send me free vitamins!!  Raw One for Women, please.  Thanks.)

I also take something that will TOTALLY sick you out - desiccated liver.  Oh, how delicious thou art, you desiccated liver, you.  I don't eat organ meats - I don't really have a good source for them (yet...I guess), but they are SO valuable to you and to your health.  So I take it in dried up tablet form.  Yummy.  If you let it melt (on accident) because you're swallowing it with your hot tea in the morning, you're going to have a mouthful of beef taste.  Oh, wow, beef taste in the morning.  What could be better?  If you're a regular consumer of liver, then, well, you really don't have to do my lame way.  But if you haven't served up some liver to you and yours lately, you might want to research the benefits of doing so.  (Or take the cheating way out and do what I do.)

Besides that, I will sometimes take a swig of cod liver oil.  You can get some serious Vitamin D and A in those puppies.  Fishies.  Whatever.

Now that's just me - you've got to find out what you may be lacking.  If you are craving things, maybe your body is telling you what you need.  I read that if you crave chocolate, you are lacking in magnesium.  Apparently our society needs a mega-dose of magnesium?  Totally possible.

Anyway, a safe bet is likely a multi-vitamin designed for you at your stage of life.  I know that if you buy whole-food based vitamins, they're going to cost more than lab-created ones, but as the lab-created ones are speaking to your body in a foreign language and don't do you any good (except for make your pee very fancy - on the plus  side for your garden), you might want to take something that your body can actually USE.  

Genius, I know.

Peace, love and just put it in your mouth already!
Ms. Daisy  

It's time to stand up: don't be a noodle spine

Did you read the article about how 8 nurses in Indiana got fired for not subjecting themselves to a mandatory flu shot?

Welcome to the U.S. of A. where freedom is slipping through your fingers like sand through the hourglass.

So in this article, apparently a hospital required all employees to get a flu shot.  Something like 2000 did not do it but only 8 nurses were fired.  The powers that be are citing "patient safety" as their reason for requiring their faithful employees to shoot stuff into their bodies against their will.  This article also said that most people won't fight it but they really seem to have a problem with those dang nurses - they don't want to do it.

I WONDER WHY.  Do you think nurses talk to people?  Do they ever talk to sick people?  Do they ever talk about HOW sick people got sick?  Do they know the system at all?  Just a teensy eensy bit, maybe?

There is something wrong here.

I don't know if you've noticed, but there is a lot of push for groupthink.  Don't be an individual.  Heavens, no.  Don't think for yourself.  Don't do anything that everyone else in the whole freakin world isn't already doing.  Stay in your box.  Betas wear khaki.  Take your soma.

If you dare to stand up for your OWN personal rights against the will and body-rapist/tyrants, you're sure to get fired.

Or worse.

Everything is somewhat connected, yes.  We all get that.  But people who are trying to get you to think collectively are raping your mind and filling your thoughts with their personally beneficial propaganda.

Wake up, it's time for you to ask them - why?  Why don't they care about their nurses? Why do they dare strong-arm educated, caring, intelligent people who have dedicated their lives to the service of others?  Doesn't their theory of "patient safety" blow up out the window the second A DIFFERENT patient walks into the hospital and "contaminates" it with their evil one-celled organisms?  Ask them - who the crap do they think they are, telling you what you must inject/inhale/consume in your body?  Ask them - who stands to benefit from this?  Who are you?  Who supports you?  How are you getting paid?  Follow the money and you're sure to find a trace of a stink.

Money, power and control - the ingredients for an ugly storm.

At least in this very weak society there are a very few who will stand up for their beliefs, for their rights against the tyrants - even when it is to their own hurt.  They are those who did not lay down and take it, but instead stood up strong, eyes straight ahead, following hard after their convictions and putting their foot down when the line was crossed.

They chose courage instead of cowardice, personal convictions over groupthink brainwash and will have a legacy to leave their very proud progeny.

May you be as likewise legendary in your own arena.

Peace, love and give the nurses some capes,
Ms. Daisy

Randoms. Happy New Year!

Okay, I’m on late today, sorry.  It was a bit of a crazy one.  Anyway, I wanted to talk to all a ya’ll about a few things in true random Daisy style.  Giddy up.

First – on your New Year's resolution to become a runner (right?  Didn’t you?  Wasn’t that on the list?), I wanted to point some of you who live in a snowy climate toward a tool that you can use to run outside whilst the world turns into a giant ice cube.  It’s called Yak Trax and m’dearies, they are amazing.  They are these metal coil thingy-ma-jigs that strap on with rubber and Velcro to the bottom of your running shoes.  It gives you a fantastic grip so you have a much less chance of falling on the ice that used to be a sidewalk.  As my dear Swedish friend says, “There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing.”  Those Swedes!  Ah, precis, det ar så popular.  Jag älskar dej, bastis!

Check out some fancy Yaktrax!

Secondly – What kind of doctor do you go see?  Have you ever considered a naturopath?  I seriously think you should.  If you get a good doctor (of any type, really), they are a gold mine of wonderful information.  I’m not knocking all other types of doctors, just so ya’s know, but I am discouraged that there are so many physicians out there who – instead of perusing your symptoms and seek an actual CAUSE – prefer to consult their gigantic book of cleverly painted pills and play Pick-Yer-Favorite-Color by using a Twister wheel provided for them by their own dear friends, the pharmaceutical companies.

Thirdly – Hillary Clinton.  If you believe ANYTHING that the media is telling you about her ailments that she so fatefully is experiencing at the perfect timing so that she does not have to testify in something that may incriminate her for wrongdoing, please, do me a favor.  Pick up a block of wood and bang it against your forehead like the monks in Monty Python’s Holy Grail.  This will help you.  Somehow.  If it doesn’t, just ask your doctor to give you the color of the week pill.

Fourthly – Guns don’t murder people, zombies and sickos do.  If you think you can solve the world’s problems by removing guns from the safes of the actual sane and law-abiding people, you might as well also ban steak knives, cars, gardening tools, ropes, and a plethora of other tools that any generic weirdo would get his weirdo hands on and do his weirdo things with.  Promoting vampires, werewolves, aliens, and crimes/murder (via shows like CSI, etc.) feed the mainstream of society and spread their sprawling talons with a slicing grip into every idea that used to be “normal” (two-parent homes, young people being respectful to their elders, not sucking blood out of people’s necks, etc.).  Society is broken into a thousand pieces and it just keeps getting hacked at every single day.  Politics aren’t going to fix it.  The media aren’t going to fix it.  (It sounds so weird to say that, but media is really a plural word.  Ugh.  It looks so gross and sounds weird that way, though, doesn’t it!?  Ew.)  There’s only one solution.  Move to Switzerland.  They all have guns there and the crime rate is like 0.000%.  That was easy!  Any other world problems, just send them my way.

Now let me just tell you what I really think.

Yes.

Ahem.

Okay, I guess that’s enough soapbox for one day.

Peace, love and I’ll meet you in Switzerland with your Yaktrax on,

Ms. Daisy