I did find out today that a knitting needle can break through your skin.  I now I have a hole in my leg because I’m a klutz.  Not big enough for stitches, but deep enough that it burns to walk much I even bled through the first band aid.  Ick.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled boring lack of updates

I’ve been very tempted to delete the post below where I was being so negative, but I haven’t decided yet.  It may disappear.

Oh and one reminder note: losing inches is better than losing pounds and the negative voices need to go LOL.

I’m giving myself a deadline of Jul 2014 to reach my goal weight.  That seems like a long time, but if I put pressure on myself, I do very badly.  My 25th high school reunion is the 4th of July weekend that year, so I want to be at goal. 

I’m giving myself until my 40th birthday to get out of debt.  I’m using Dave Ramsay’s system, and with as little as we owe, it’s not outrageous to think we can be done by May 2011.  I’d like to be able to give more in December 2011, and repay the kindnesses shown to our family this year. (My church did an Angel tree for families with little money.  My kids ended up with a lot of gifts from the church, and they gave us food.  I was amazed at how much we got, and in tears from the generosity.)

I have yet to figure out what else I want to change about my life, but I do know I want to go back to school and finish my degree as well.  I’ve spent too much time being complacent about where I am in life.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the big scare for the swine flu lately.  There’s a varying number of dead, mostly in Mexico, with one Mexican toddler who died here in the US.  I don’t mean to sound callous, but it’s hard to get worried about this one.  It seems like there’s always a global pandemic happening.  The avian flu scare wasn’t all that long ago.  It also seems like they’re only making things worse with their rushing around.  I’ve seen reports that hospital workers who have been vaccinated for the flu have died.  Any vaccine will lower your immunity for a few days, making it easier for you to catch anything.  Add that to working in a hospital where you’re treating those with the flu and you’re definitely going to catch it.  Then with the lowered immunity, it’s too easy to die from it.

Don’t get me wrong.  Yes, there’s reason to be concerned, but I guess my feeling on it is a bit fatalistic right now.  If it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen.  I’m sure a dear friend of mine will disagree with me on that… or he may not.  I don’t remember talking to him about things happening as they’re supposed to.

As for the rest, my feeling is you need to stay away from the flu vaccine and do what you can to stay healthy.  Yes, that means eating your fruits and veggies.  Get plenty of sleep and do what you can to take care of yourself.

And on the note of getting plenty of sleep, it’s past time for me to get some myself.  G’night and stay healthy.

This is just scary.  With the problems in China with infants hospitalized because of melamine in baby formula, the FDA said that there was no safe level of Melamine.  That is until they tested the formulas here in the US.  Now, they’re saying it’s safe under 1 ppm. 

 So, they’re allowing us to poison our most precious asset, our helpless, dependent infants.  That’s really comforting, isn’t it?  Sometimes I wonder what these people are thinking in saying that stuff is safe with no scientific evidence to support their statements?  I mean they’re doing the same with BPA in bottles… instead the manufacturers have removed BPA from the bottles on their own. 

It’s possible the backlash is going to get the formula manufacturers to pay more attention to their formula.  I would certainly hope so.

Research is showing that younger and younger girls are having problems with body image. In the above article, it’s suggested that girls get a poor body image from their mothers.  Women who go on crash diets and focus entirely on losing weight or how fat they think they are, even the innocent or not so innocent little comments to their kids about not eating too many sweets because they’ll get fat?

That’s damaging to a girl’s self image.  My ex’s daughter had self image issues.  Her aunts used to tell her that if she didn’t watch what she ate, she’d end up as fat as her father was.  Because of this, she had eating issues.  She’d chew on the same bite of food for up to 5 minutes at a time, or hide the food in her cheek instead of swallowing it.  I always felt bad about yelling at her for this, but I didn’t know how else to handle it.  In the meantime, when she was at our house for the weekend, he and I tried to make sure she didn’t sit in front of the tv all the time like she did at home.  Of course, it meant she needed to be constantly entertained because she didn’t know how to entertain herself without sitting in front of the tv.

I look at my daughter now, and listen to her.  I know I’m unhealthy and need to lose weight, but I don’t see her reflecting this in her own body image.  I put her hair up in the morning and she runs to tell her daddy that she looks beautiful.  She’s always wanting to look at herself in the mirror.  She will also freely tell anyone that’ll listen that I’m beautiful.  I guess in a way I am, when seen through the eyes of a little girl who looks up to her mommy and wants to be like her.

I try to keep her active and eating balanced meals.  I know this is something I’ll have to work at as she grows, I know I need to work on it for myself too.  I need to start being more active and eating healthier foods.  I will soon have 2 kids under 5, and I want to be there for them.  Since my husband chooses not to take care of his diabetes, then I need to do everything I can to make sure I stay healthy for these kids.  I also want to be around for my older son.  He graduates this year, but he still needs his mom. 

All of us need to focus on the good in ourselves instead of the bad.  So, maybe I’m not good at standing up to people who disagree with me.  I am still a geek.  I still know computers, and I still like science fiction.  That doesn’t meant that I’m a bad person.  You have to weigh all of your good and bad traits.  Focus on the good ones, work on improving the bad ones. 

 As for me, once the baby is born, I’ll be focusing on getting healthy for all three of my kids.

 Ok, so I give.  If there is no difference between HFCS and sugar, why do we even have it?  Why must we mess with corn syrup by adding enzymes and whatnot to make this?  So it’s sweeter.  Big deal. 

Honestly, I won’t feed my kids anything with HFCS in it if I have a choice.  My daughter was asking for yogurt the other day, and it took forever to find one that didn’t have either aspartame or high fructose corn syrup in it.  A 3 year old doesn’t need either of these types of sweeteners.  I finally found a “natural” yogurt that was sweetened with sugar.  Not the best, but at least it’s sweet.  And it doesn’t taste like candy, it tastes like yogurt. 

 I suspect that the person posted that open letter to the editor because they’re afraid their sales of high fructose corn syrup are going to go down because no one wants anything to do with it.  Once people start trying to improve their health and the health of their families, they stop buying garbage like that.  With the natural foods movement, it’s even more pronounced that we’re moving away from that type of artificial sweetener.  Yes, I lump it in with things like aspartame/nutra sweet, sweet ‘n low and splenda (I can’t remember the real names of the sweeteners right now, I’ll look them up later).  I eat them only when I don’t have a choice.  Lately I’ve been sticking mostly to either honey or no sweetener at all in my drinks.

 Guess if their sales fail on the high fructose corn syrup front, they can start selling the corn as food again, huh?

With work running the Biggest Loser contest, I found this article very interesting.  My work does not offer free food very often, so there’s not a whole lot they’d be able to do.  However, there are a few things that I find ironic.

 First of all, though I freely admit I’m a geek, I work for a fairly large meat processing plant.  The company I work for makes thinly sliced/Philly style steaks and beef patties, but they also make fully cooked meatloaf, cooked beef, pork and chicken, uncooked beef, pork and chicken — all with or without soy, and with or without breading — cooked and uncooked salisbury steaks, oh yea and partially fried breaded beef, pork and chicken, some of this even with cheese.  So anyone else see the irony in the company offering a Biggest Loser contest?  Though they may advertise items that have no trans fat, not all of these items are low in fat. 

 Second, on Tuesday, we’re going to have a “First Annual” hot dog eating contest.  Everyone at the building I work at is invited, as long as someone in their department is participating in the contest.  That’s really healthy, huh? 

 That’s not counting when my department (which includes the dietitians) has a pot luck, which generally happens once a month, for birthdays and/or holidays.  Though there’s usually salad or other healthy food, there’s always some sort of sweets too.  Cake, cheesecake, pie.  That’s conducive to losing weight, isn’t it?

 At work, we have a cafeteria where we can get our lunches or snacks.  About 2 years ago, the dietitians tried to get healthier food into the cafeteria.  Unfortunately, there were mixed results.  The cafeteria kept making too many changes, so the dietitians couldn’t give nutrition information for the healthier menu items.  The healthier menu items didn’t always go over well.  They still do offer one “healthier” menu item every day, but I’m never sure how healthy these items are even if they are listed as healthy on the menu. 

Then again, I’ve noticed that I have a more rigid idea of what is healthy than even the dietitians.  I guess reading the book SuperfoodsRX changed my opinion on a lot of things.  Well, that and reading posts by a girl on eDiets, she aimed for at least 10 servings of superfoods a day, and had energy at 40 that I envied at 34.

Does this mean I think the companies are doing the right thing offering the lower fat and healthier fare?  Well that depends.  Are they cracking down on people bringing their own (unhealthy) food?  Then, as much as I understand how much this helps with insurance costs, that’s restricting someone’s freedom. 

 On the other hand, offering incentives and lower insurance rates if someone loses weight, to me, that leaves the choice to them.  We do pay more in medical costs with the way that America’s weight has gone up.  The incidence of obesity related diseases has at least doubled in the last 20 years.  I’m not talking just heart disease and stroke risks.  My father was thin and had a several strokes.  My sister is thin and has had to have an operation to put stents in her arteries near her heart.  Heart disease and stroke may be related to bad diet (and smoking), even though type 2 diabetes may be more prevalent in those who are overweight or even obese, I’m talking about things like fractures in the heel bones from bearing all the weight over the years, or knee problems caused by the same.  What about when women have back pain from the extra weight in their breasts from being too heavy? 

 Of course, the food and drug companies are making a lot of money off this.  The more food people eat, the fatter they get, the more these companies get to earn money off our weight problems.  But the insurance companies and doctors are also earning money off this.  The sicker we are, the more we go visit them, the more we pay, and ’round and ’round it goes. 

The solution?  Take advantage of anything your company offers to help you lose weight.  Yea, it seems silly to be so focused on your weight, especially if you’re not worried about how you look, but if you want to live longer, you need to take care of yourself.  Exercise, & eat right, even add in more fruits and vegetables.  We may be getting mixed signals, but no one has ever said fruit and vegetables are unhealthy.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about the possibility of a recession.  It’s odd because the media seems to flip-flop between “yes, we’re in one” and “no, we’re not in one.”  It all seems to depend on what website I’m reading for that day.  I’ve been watching the reports about the Fed lowering interest rate.  A lot would think that’s a good thing.  But honestly, though I understand what they’re trying to do, they are making a big mistake.  The price of everything is going up because the American dollar is weakening against foreign currency. 

 When I lived in Vermont, Canadians would come south to shop, even with the exchange rate, they were getting a better deal in the US because of the GST (sales tax).  Now, $1 CN is roughly equivalent to $1.02 US.  That’s the closest I’ve ever seen it.  In 1998, $1 CN was roughly 70 cents US.  That’s the earliest I can find data for, but that’s about what it was in 1992 when I was working retail. 

 Foreign bond investors are no longer buying US bonds because the US Treasury is pretty much making its own money to try to stave off the problems with the ”housing bubble” collapse and the attendant problems with the banks.  The US dollar is in free-fall and all the Federal Reserve wants to do is make sure that the banks don’t go under.   

 The problem remains larger than just the US though.  The world economy is going to go through some tough times while the markets “reset” to where they should be if it hadn’t been for this “housing bubble”

 Maybe it’s time to get a farm and start growing my own food. More on that later.

Personally, I’d prefer that we really test any of these so-called drugs before we let pregnant women take them. Everyone I know that has taken anti-depressant drugs has had an adverse reaction to at least one. It’s scary to have suicidal thoughts because of a prescription medication that is supposed to help you.

I’m having issues with WordPress tonight, so the link is going to have to stay as it is.