Women are notoriously unkind to one another and although I don’t want to turn this into a political rant of any sort – at this time, more than any other, women ought to be banding together. We’ve been divided, ladies, let’s catch up to what is going on, political parties aside, and stand up before our daughters and granddaughters pay dearly for our complacency.

We all deserve the right to choose what is best for our lives and our bodies and no one has the right to make such personal calls for us. We should all be striving to preserve the right for all women to choose. You choose not to – great, that’s YOUR choice. For another woman her circumstances may dictate something else altogether – and you should support her right to make a CHOICE without harassment and without cruel and unwanted procedures. Once one type of CHOICE gets taken away – others are sure to follow.

It was brought to my attention the other day that women haven’t even had the right to vote for a hundred years yet and we’re in danger of going backwards. If you don’t make your voice heard today the women of tomorrow aren’t going to be heard at all.

And, with my rant aside – it’s kind of nice to find a place online where women are really trying to help each other out. So many of us rely on our inner circles and facebook friends that it’s awfully nice to see women in a mom forum hanging out and supporting one another with helpful advice and tips. Check it out, it’s pretty cool.

After my ranty post yesterday I thought I needed to clean it up a bit and give you another facet of my personality. I heard this song for the first time when Amy played it at a concert here in Bakersfield in 2008, I got to meet her that night too, words cannot begin to describe the thrill of getting to meet one of your heroes. She wrote this song based on something her older children’s grandmother used to say, beautiful words and lyrics we should all strive to live by… even me.

Kate uses part of the lyrics as her signature file in her email, I’m so proud of my kid she really does embody these lyrics.

“There’s so much good in the worst of us,
so much bad in the best of us,
it never makes sense for any of us,
to criticize the rest of us” -Amy Grant

I’ve been asked a bunch, Kate and I had the BEST time at the Blake Shelton concert. He really exceeded our expectations. Pics and more to come soon-ish.

Religion and politics… after this, I’m dropping both subjects for a while.

Anyone left?

Who would have guessed that in the year my husband and I are most aligned politically that I would desperately be in need of a breather? It’s not my husband, he’s awesome. I’ve seen him charging into debates brilliantly and his anger at Rush Limbaugh made me swoon. No, it’s not him. It’s me. Maybe it’s finally reaching a point in our relationship where I see all of my successes (him agreeing with me) and all the compromises I am willing to make (not as much fun as the other) and the sum total is “Whew! Glad that’s over with; let’s move on to something else!”

Nah. That’s not it. The real reason for the needed breather is the amount of sewage I have read over the past few weeks. I read an article recently that said Rick Santorum was popular with uneducated people. That’s probably true especially given some of the absolute disgusting garbage I have seen people spewing in all their misspelled glory. Of course, in the sad world of Santorum logic college students are nothing more than elitist, hypocritical, liberal garbage. This makes perfect sense to me, after all most college students can articulate their arguments well, use proper grammar and spelling whereas the best the people putting them down can do is swear that “the gays” are the reason this country is going into the toilet.

I stopped just short of naming names here (and providing contact information) because my husband asked me not to. Needless to say, when one proclaims to be on a mission to prove that “Christians are intelligent” while misspelling 85% of the comment’s content and then attempting to insult someone by ironically calling them a “genious” (translation: GENIUS) it might be time to give up your cause or at the very least stop typing.

I think Mark Twain got it right when he said, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

It’s safe to say this unnamed person has removed all doubt in my book. But, then he probably did that several years ago when he sat at a dinner table and loudly announced “YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY CHRISTIANS WANT BILL CLINTON IMPEACHED” as if it were some underground, secret movement that people were carefully keeping under wraps at the time.

The afore mentioned person has been known to cite statistics on homosexuality with zero credible sources (or sources AT ALL) to support them. Things like:

- Homosexual sex does irreparable damage to the human body
- Homosexual sex is responsible for 99% of the STDs floating around “out there”
- Homosexual relationships have greater instances of abuse and domestic violence

It’s okay, I can completely see where he might get these ideas. You see, in the same comment thread this person claimed to work in a medical facility and has supposedly seen the damage of homosexual relationships “first hand” – I don’t know where you come from but around here we don’t call PRISONS “medical facilities” and being a PRISON GUARD doesn’t make you “medical personnel” correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m fairly certain I’m not. I can certainly see why someone working in a prison might see instances of physical damage that may or may not have anything to do with homosexuality.

If you are lost here let me refer you to the movie “American Me” or the HBO show “Oz” and that should clear it all up for you.

It goes without saying that those sorts of statistics can’t accurately be based on prison violence. I hate to burst his bubble but all rape does damage regardless of what gender the victim is. I’m more concerned with what this morbid obsession with anal sex says about the person citing these “statistics.” After all, he never seems to discuss the damage of lesbian sex, or lesbian sex at all and even more interesting, the only interest I’ve seen him take in “girly bits” would be when he protests abortion. Quite frankly, I think someone needs to just give it up and come on out of the closet. I guarantee we’d be nicer to him than he has been to anyone else.

But, at the end of this I’m sort of slinging the same kind of sewage I complained about and now you see why I want a breather. This whole thing is exhausting. It’s a nonstop roller coaster of judgment, hate, bigotry, intolerance and it’s all cloaked in the Kirk Cameron-esque guise of “loving all people” or trying to or some such nonsense.

I tell you this, “loving all people” or however that guy from “Growing Pains” put it – (and really? A former teenage heartthrob is your hero? Let’s go back to that whole in the closet thing, shall we?) should not make the rest of us feel so dirty inside. The only thing “underpinning western civilization” is the determination of a particular group of people who seem hell bent on creating a Grand Canyon sized divide and then happily pushing the people who don’t bend to their will into it. After all, homosexuality has been around for thousands of years, prior to the birth of Christianity actually, and God must not have too big of an issue with it or maybe it’s His whole premise of “free will” that He’s sticking to.

At the end of the day, there are bigger issues going on in this country than what two consenting adults are doing with their lives. Marriage equality and women’s health and reproductive choices need to be taken off the table entirely.

Don’t get me wrong, I support their right to free speech, say what you believe, stand by it, but don’t whine and complain when someone disagrees with you. Don’t get up on your high horse and try to claim YOUR rights are being trampled on. After all, the people disagreeing with you aren’t trying to restrict YOUR rights, we are just trying to ensure the same rights for everyone that you already take advantage of and take for granted.

Your beliefs, your theology, your religion should dictate your own personal behavior, it should/can give you the basis for how you want to raise your children and guide your family, but it has no place in government or politics. After all, let’s not forget that we refer to the last time religion ruled the world as “the Dark Ages.”

But as for that “Tea Party” I think you better read up on your Founding Fathers because the two of you are light years apart in your intention for this country.

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.”

Source: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, April 11, 1823.

“Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him (i.e. Jesus) by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.”

Source: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to William Short, April 13, 1820

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.” Source: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814.

Alternate post title: He Did It To Me Again.

The butterfly bush (or as my husband refers to it… “that butterfly monster”) turned out to be the fastest growing, most furiously blooming plant I have ever encountered. It smells wonderful, attracts butterflies by the hundreds through the spring/summer but has to be trimmed back several times a year. Emphasis on “several times a year.”

We’ve had an unusually warm January with some beautiful sunny days and since we had a new lilac tree to plant we spent last Saturday in the yard.

We cleaned up anything dead-ish, dug up an old rosemary plant that had died, cleaned out weeds that were trying to poke up and trimmed some trees and bushes. Then my husband said, “Oh, I trimmed up the butterfly bush…” I don’t recall anything he said after that because I took one look at my butterfly bush and made this face:

My butterfly bush should look like this (not now, it’s winter, but when it’s not winter it should):

Remember the last time he did this to me?

“YOU’RE TRYING TO KILL HER!!!!!!” I might have said a little too loudly, I think I could hear the neighbor’s curiosity pique from two, possibly more, yards away.

“I am not trying to kill it.” He said in a that stop-being-so-dramatic tone. “Your butterfly bush was trying to eat my redwoods… again.”

Admittedly, the first time those redwoods were still a little on the scrawny side and I could see why Mike was being overly ridiculous, dramatic and a complete sissy la la concerned about my beautiful butterfly bush appearing to attempt to dwarf his beloved redwoods.

This time? Those redwoods are HUGE. They are easily as tall as a two-story house and my precious butterfly bush?

NOT SO MUCH.

I stopped talking to him. I might have muttered something about doing a little pruning of my own on his precious sago palm which looks like this:

Compared to my butterfly bush, which for reference, looks LIKE THIS:

A little while later my husband said, “I put fertilizer on all the plants. I fertilized the butterfly bush too, I just wanted to make sure you know that I am NOT trying to kill your plant.”

I can’t say the same for the plant, Mike. I suggest you start sleeping with one eye open.

Are there cheap electricity companies in Texas? Do people in Texas have a choice over their electric companies?

Do you have a choice in electric companies where you live?

I don’t know why this interests me or piques my curiosity. I can only say that it is a completely new thought for me because here in Cali we have always lived under the PG&E regime, that would be Pacific Gas and Electric. If you want those light bulbs to light, those Christmas lights to twinkle, that electric stove to boil your pasta… you gotta have yourself chained to the all-seeing-all-knowing-creator-of-questionable-meters.

Well, unless you are one of those lucky hippies living off the grid. Got yourself a windmill? Maybe a little dam whipping up your hydro-electricity thing-a-ma-bob? Solar panels, anyone?

I think eventually I might like to disappear out into the foresty-mountain-ey sort of place and live off the grid. I think that sounds awesome. I’d like to go all Ed Begley and make Mike pedal his buns off on a bicycle to power my toaster. Yes, I think I might like that very much.

I cannot stand clicking on a video of a PREVIEW of an upcoming episode of a show I watch only to find a commercial before the preview. A PREVIEW is a COMMERCIAL. So now, we have commercials FOR commercials? This sends me into whirlwinds of pissed off that I can’t even begin to describe.

For what it’s worth? TV Squad used to be one of my favorite sites to visit daily. I loved the reviews and recaps of my favorite shows. Then, Huffington Post took over and ruined it. It’s a mess. I can’t find anything I like and it looks just like the rest of Huffington Post, which is to say, an ADD sufferers DREAM.

TV Squad isn’t that big of a loss considering it routinely did something else that is a pet peeve of mine… auto loading video clips. If I WANT to watch the video, I know where to find the play button. I don’t need you to play it automatically so it competes with the current Blake Shelton or Billy Currington song I’m playing.

On a mostly unrelated note, ne of the most tedious, boring tasks is photo scanning. I don’t have the patience to screw around with a scanner and wait for it to go back and forth over my picture, document or whatever. I have even been known to just take a picture of a picture just to save myself hassling with that stupid scanner.

No joke.

This brought to you by Friday nothingness. I doubt this will be a regular occurrence around here but… you never know.

11/11/11 – time for a list of 11 things!!!

1. Today I am making a batch of raw, kale chips for the first time.

2. It’s chilly but not too chilly so tonight we are going to enjoy some grilled tri-tip around a cozy fire on the back patio.

3. Along with the tri-tip I’m serving my quick and easy salsa!

Amy’s Quick Salsa

1 can of Herdez Salsa Ranchera (it’s a small can)

1 Can fresh diced tomatoes (salsa style, large-ish can)

1 onion

2 jalapenos

1 yellow chile (optional)

3 cloves garlic peeled

1 tblspn of lemon juice

salt to taste

You can chop by hand, but I run the onion, peppers and garlic through the food processor so they are fairly even an finely chopped. Dump into a bowl with the tomatoes, salsa ranchera, lemon juice and salt. Mix thoroughly and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.

Serve with chips, tacos, grilled meats, etc.

I also like to add about 3 heavy tablespoons to 4 avocados and the juice of 1/2 a lime for a fast guacamole.

4. I’ve been listening to Christmas music a lot. I’m really enjoying it.

5. One of my closest friends just gave birth to the most beautiful baby on the planet. Congrats, Chickie!!!!!

6. One of my current favorite blogs is “Better After” – I now have a project list days and days long. My husband sort of has a love/hate thing going with this concept. He loves that I want to acquire more tools for the garage but umm… isn’t too crazy about the long list of projects.

7. Really enjoyed this interview with Amy Grant and Vince Gill. I’m going to try out the cookie recipe soon.

8. I am ahead of the game for Thanksgiving. I’ve already bought everything that can sit in the pantry or freezer. All that’s left are the fresh veggies!!

9. People who are married and have the same facebook account BUG me. Just because you are married does not mean you can’t have your own identity. Good grief!

10. Ditto grown women who have to continually refer to their friend as “BF” every time they address them on Facebook. Dogs have more attractive way of marking their territory.

11. Veteran’s Day… to all the veterans out there, thank you for your sacrifice and service to our country. God bless!

I’ve said it before and I will say it again…

I’ve ranted about this before, okay, I’ve used a lot of expletives to express my rage and insanity displeasure at having to sit through a 30 second commercial to… drum roll… watch a PREVIEW (aka COMMERCIAL FOR A TELEVISION SHOW I WATCH) of a television episode that won’t air until next week. It bothers me. It bugs me. A lot.

If I cruise over to NBC.Com to watch the preview for “Parenthood” I shouldn’t have to sit through a 30 second commercial for insurance that lasts almost as long as the preview. Seriously.

/psycho rant

Carry on with your day.

Did you know that 41 million women in the United States and 250 million worldwide are experiencing the chronic symptoms of menopause, ranging from hot flashes, anxiety, fatigue, anxiety, mood swings and decreased libido? With thousands more become menopausal each day, these chronic and disruptive symptoms, wrought by wildly fluctuating hormones, can negatively affect families, jobs, libidos and mental and physical states. – Gotmenopause.com

I’m on a bit of a health kick in recent posts. I just feel that now, more than ever, people need to be in touch with what is going on with their bodies. Menopause is not some taboo word that dare not be spoken, or relegated to harsh whispers of “the change” with dainty hand-covered mouths. The debate of HRT vs. homeopathic, diet and exercise alternatives rages on and personally, I don’t think there is one right blanket answer or remedy for everyone. For myself, I do feel it’s necessary to go as natural and organic as possible.

Menopause symptoms make for funny television shows but women know all too well that these types of issues haven’t exactly been on the front burner of modern medical science.

I’m no stranger to pharmaceutical intervention, while it’s necessary in some cases, I firmly believe that in most cases it’s not and prescriptions do not need to be handed out like candy.

It’s great to see informative websites popping up to cover women’s health issues like menopause. The more information the better and it shouldn’t just be relegated to conversations between patients and doctors (who were just taken out to lunch by their favorite pharmaceutical sales rep).

For too long hormones have been thought of something floating around in a woman’s head and appropriate attention hasn’t been given to the role they play. In many places (especially where I live) there are very few physicians willing to pay any attention to what role hormones play in your quality of life or how they contribute to health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and thyroid problems. It seems like unless you are trying to get pregnant (fertility = big bucks!) they just don’t have the time or interest to find out what is causing your weight gain, hair loss, skin issues, headaches, or joint pain.

High blood pressure? Here is a pill. Losing your hair? Excess hair? Go get it waxed, it’s not a medical problem. Joint pain? Welcome to getting older, sweetheart. Weight gain? Clearly, you are lazy and need to diet and exercise more!

More and more it seems we are plugging the holes in the dam with bubble gum and band-aids instead of repairing the dam. I won’t get started on why but suffice it to say it always comes down to more money in pockets that are already big enough. Which is why it’s so important to take a proactive role in your health, no one else is going to advocate for you better than you. Not to mention that while most people have hidden agendas and bottom lines to keep an eye on – YOUR only agenda is a better quality of life and life is too short to blindly hand the maintenance of your health over to someone without question.

What do you do to be your own health care advocate? Do you have specific websites you rely on?

I thought I would provide some more information in regards to the post on diet and food allergies yesterday. It’s funny because when you talk about a diet in our culture people assume you want to lose weight. It’s all about being thin. Sure, some people say that they just want to be healthy but the majority is about being thin.

Ladies, a great place to start is Women to Women if you haven’t seen the book The Core Balance Diet by Marcelle Pick – its absolutely fascinating. It really starts with establishing health that eliminates pesky hormone fluctuations, menopause symptoms, PMS and all the assorted yucky symptoms that go along with it and after all that, you naturally start to shed pounds. It’s not about a “one diet fits all” there is a lengthy questionnaire in the book that helps you to figure out which issue is your most pressing from digestive, hormonal, adrenal, neurotransmitter, inflammation, and/or detoxification.

I am just now beginning this process but I notice a huge difference when I keep the processed junk out of my diet.

I’ve found loads of fascinating information at Dr. Mark Hyman’s site.

Eat well for less even if you don’t have time – great article.

Check out this Ultra Simple Diet Quiz – it’s super short and eye opening.

And finally, take the time to watch this video… totally safe for work, kids, etc.