Paleo

Good Sunday afternoon!  I promised to blog about paleo and I’m finally getting around to it!  There is another topic that I would like to blog about--my car--but that saga is not yet over, so that can wait until next week.

So, November first I decided to get serious about sticking to the paleo lifestyle.  I had kind of been dabbling in it for some months, but was not totally sticking to it.  I decided that November was a good time to get serious.  I was working from home most of the time and now it seems, am among the pensioners crowd, so I have time to focus on this.  

Cavan and I have been having fruit smoothies every morning for a while.  Just frozen fruit (yes, I check to make sure there is NO sugar or sweeteners added), almonds and a bit of juice so that it doesn’t become a slushie.  Juice isn’t generally recommended, but I do make sure that it doesn’t have any additives.

Lunch is generally either nuts and dried fruit, or vegetable soup that I make myself.

Dinner is either beef, pork, poultry or fish, with vegetables.  No potatoes, although sometimes Cavan has potatoes and if I have anything else, it might be squash or sweet potatoes.

I even made my own spaghetti sauce, with just canned tomato sauce (nothing added, not even salt), with a cooked ground beef/pork combo, chopped veggies and spices.  Then I cook spaghetti squash and have the sauce on it.  Great stuff!

If we go out, I often have eggs, as an omelette, or scrambled.  Sometimes I have a salad with grilled chicken, or once with grilled salmon.  The salad dressing is my little cheat.

So, it looks like my belly has deflated and clothes fit much better.  I think I will stick with it!!  

I will try some more baking, as well.  I made paleo cinnamon rolls that even Cavan liked!  With Christmas coming up, I am planning some more paleo baking, of course.  I have some recipes to try.  There are tons of paleo websites out there with oodles of great recipes.  This is not that difficult to stick to.

I am never hungry, so the only reason I might stray is if I am out for a meal and I can’t get exactly what I want.

This is a great lifestyle and I will try to carry it on for the rest of my life.  As the wheat belly book says (and that is where I started this journey), stick with one ingredient foods.  It is much better for you.  We need to get away from these chemicals.  They can’t possible be good for us.

So, I pray that everyone has a great week and wish you all well with your own food journey!

Surprise Retirement

Happy Sunday!  I’m afraid that I will be pushing paleo out another week, because I am going to blog about my surprise retirement.

Just so you aren’t left hanging on the paleo topic, let me at least say that I have been dedicated to paleo--before I was kind of doing paleo, but not dedicated--I have lost 10 pounds.  Now that is 10 pounds from November 1st until now, November 22nd.  I would say that is pretty good, but I will blog about it more next week unless interrupted by something else!

Anyway, let me set the scene for my surprise retirement story.  I have worked for Enbridge for over 31 years.  They have been very good to me through all of life’s ups and downs, including divorce, single parenthood and my MS diagnosis.  I have tried not to have to be off very often for any of my challenges over the years, and in more recent years, I haven’t had to be off for any reason other than the usual cold, or whatever, but I have had to have accommodations made.

My most recent boss was so very understanding and would agree to almost anything, as long as I didn’t retire!  So, I progressed from, working at home on Fridays, to working from home Mondays and Fridays, to only being in the office a day or two a week--whenever necessary to attend meetings on site, although mostly, I dealt with folks in Calgary, Edmonton and Houston.

Then, we worked out this plan of 9/80, which I believe I blogged about.  It meant that I worked nine hours Monday to Thursday and the first Friday I worked eight hours and then had every other Friday off.  Of course, there are ten statutory holidays in Ontario, plus, we got one Scheduled Day Off (SDO) each month, and I had six weeks vacation, once I had 30 years of service.  So, my next progression was to take the first Friday off as an SDO, or a vacation day.  That still left me with several vacation days.

So, long story short, I was working mostly from home, nine hours a day, four days a week.  Enbridge has been kind to me.

That was working nicely, and then Monday, November 16th arrived and at 10am, I got the call letting me know that due to workforce reduction, my employment ended .  I will admit that it was a shock, but again Enbridge has been kind to me.  I could have retired in May of 2014, but continued on because my youngest was still in post secondary school.  I now have a full pension, and get to begin the next chapter in my life.  They were also kind with enough severance to allow me to continue to help my youngest until she graduates in April.  Life is good.

I now have the time to catch up on reading, writing, crafts and the many movies that are still in shrink wrap, that I have collected.  I also have other ideas in mind, but I will try not to overtax my MS.

So, I pray that whatever chapter you are in, in your life, it is working well for you.  God Bless!

Paris

I was planning on blogging about paleo this week, but as I await a customer service rep to answer my call at Indigo, I’ll begin my blog and it will focus on the events in Paris.

The events in Paris this week are positively horrifying and heartbreaking.  Imagine, you are out for a nice evening and all hell breaks loose and we’re not talking the usual crazies who have had too much to drink, we’re talking suicide bombers--the day before it would have been unimaginable.  

I truly cannot even imagine what it was like to be there but my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims, their families and everyone.  Even here in Canada, Facebook and Twitter have been lighting up with thoughts, fears and prayers.  When will it all end?  

I have a great interest in religion.  I cannot even possibly imagine that anything in the Koran or any other religious works is telling people to do this.  It cannot be!  Whether you believe in Yahweh, God, Allah, or any other god, are they not all merciful and understanding?  Do they not all teach us to love one another?  How did things go so wrong?

I know that the God that I believe in teaches us to love one another as he has loved us.  He gave us free will, but it was not meant to do these things.  We all have difficulties in life, some much more than others, but we must not blame each other for that.  We must help each other to get through this life.

There is truly enough food and water on earth for us all and we can share.  We are free to worship whoever we wish to as part of our free will.  Although our God asks us to have no other gods before Him.

I spent some time reading things on the Internet yesterday--perhaps not the best idea.  One article I read said that the perpetrators want to force armageddon!  Do we really need to see the end of our planet?  For what purpose?  Is it really time for mankind to be obliterated?  Wow.  Pretty wild ideas.  Can’t we just sit down and work through this?

It seems I have way more questions than answers.  We can only hope that we can avoid another horrible incident, by staying ahead of these zealots.  Is that possible?

Please pray that this is possible and as each week passes, we begin to breathe again and enjoy the wonders of this planet called earth rather than watching them be destroyed.

God bless you and keep you!

Book Blues

Happy Sunday!  It’s a chilly one here in the feel good town of Cobourg, but a lovely sunny day.

Cavan and I spent several hours at Word Northumberland yesterday.  I did sell two books to a librarian at the Colborne library.  I’m afraid that was it.  Since it was only $10 for the table, I guess I did have a bit of a profit.  Disappointing, but as another author pointed out, ‘No-one in Canada makes money off of books except for Margaret Atwood.’  Probably reasonably accurate, although there are a few other great and prolific authors north of the 49th parallel.

The problem with my books and I knew this from the start, is that the age group is pretty small and, of course they are Christian books, which makes the audience even smaller. Oh well, I certainly published with my eyes wide open.

This week my second book ‘Animals of the New Testament’ was reviewed by the Christian Children’s Book Review.  It was not a good review.  The actual overall rating was ‘ho-hum.’  Oh well.  They took exception to the price, which I agree is too high, but set by the publisher, so I have no control over that. They also took exception to there not being enough pictures.  That was mostly controlled by what I could afford and since I decided to pack six stories in each book, there was only one picture followed by three pages of text.

They also had major issues with the book as it was taken as fact.  Yes, I do have a line of scripture at the beginning of each story to say where the facts were.  And yes, I inserted animals to help children remember the stories.  The critic felt that was too much of a stretch.

I believe that taken in the right light, that the books have merit and for those who don’t take the Bible literally, it might work better for them.  I’m quite sure that there were many other minor characters not mentioned in the Bible.  I did stay true to what animals do live in the region of the world that the stories took place--hence no polar bears or penguins!

Well, I keep plugging away.  As I mentioned to one publisher yesterday, ‘Books are only a tiny bit writing and publishing and a huge amount of marketing!’ I think that any author will agree with that.

As often happens to me, I left the event yesterday with more books than I arrived with.  That is the problem when you are not only a writer, but also a reader!  Not to mention that Christmas is coming and I bought some as gifts!

I pray that everyone has a great week and don’t sweat the critics!  If in your heart of hearts, you believe you are doing something worthwhile, carry on!  God bless you all.

November

Under the category of ‘time flies,’ here we are in November!  Hallowe’en is over and we now begin my favorite season:  Christmas!

I must confess that I don’t decorate as much as I did when the girls were little but, I still love Christmas!  I don’t decorate so much for two reasons.  One, my girls are grown and on their own, and two, I just don’t have the energy anymore.  

Cavan suggested bringing in the tree yesterday and I thought it was too soon.  I then realized that with life being so busy over the next few weeks, that perhaps I should start now!  Well, maybe next week.  

Even though I love Christmas, to me it loses that feeling of being special if you extend it too long.  Mind you, extending it into the new year, might get us through a cold and blustery winter! Hm….

One of my favorite traditions during this season, is a special day that I spend with my good friend Viv.  One day in December, usually the first Friday, I take Viv down to the Gardner Museum for the Twelve Trees of Christmas.  They have twelve trees on exhibit, each decorated by a different designer or architect.  Every year there is a theme.  

The very first year I went, my girls were quite small and the theme was ‘Over the Decades’ and they had a beanie baby tree for the 90’s, a space race tree (half US and half USSR) for the 60’s and a Monopoly tree for the 50’s.  it was great.

Every year the theme is different.  This year, it is ‘The Joy of Creativity,’ I’m sure it will be lovely.  Some years have trees that are a bit too ‘artsy’ for me.  I don’t remember the theme, but one year had a huge Christmas cookie cutter.  It was interesting, but a huge metal cookie cutter with no decorations is not my cup of tea.  One year had the ‘homeless’ decorated tree in a shopping cart.

The exhibit is definitely worth seeing.  This year, I discovered that the Allan Gardens has a special Christmas exhibit, with over 30 varieties of poinsettias!  Viv and I are adding it to our annual tradition.  What could be better than adding more horticulture to twelve trees!  I am really looking forward to this year!

The Allan Gardens event begins on the first Sunday of December, so Viv and I will delay our tradition for a week to fit in both.

The first weekend of December is pretty busy anyway.  Cavan is singing with the St. Mike’s choir alumni at Massey Hall.  I think I mentioned that in last week’s blog.  The Friday night is the rehearsal and then the shows are 3pm on Saturday and again on Sunday.  Busy times!

So, God bless everyone as they begin their own Christmas traditions!  Have a blessed week!