Simple Wisdom for the Newly Single

I am finding that this world is not very accommodating to people whose relationships don't work out.

Seriously, a girl can't go to the grocery store and pick up a bunch of bananas without Adele coming over the radio and reminding her, "Sometimes it lasts in love, sometimes it hurts instead....."

Totally uncalled for. I mean. . .Yeah.

Well. When you have been a "We," it takes a painful mental adjustment to become an "I" again, I think. Maybe this doesn't apply to you right now, maybe it does, maybe it never will again. This is my blog, so I can only write about what's on my mind.

So here is a little tongue-in-cheek guidebook I am writing for the tough transitions in life. . .written particularly for the broken-up girl, but possibly with broader applications. . .

1. Pray until you find certainty and peace about your decisions if at all possible. And write down the foundation for your certainty so that you can refer to it frequently in moments of mental vacillation. (They will come. You gotta be armed.)
   
2. Permit yourself to feel your feelings fully and without evasion.
   
3. But don't dwell on them. If you find yourself wallowing, think about bigger, more important things to put your problems in perspective.
   
4. Rest. If you ran a marathon, you'd stretch and kick back for awhile, right? Well, if your heart has just run an emotional marathon, let it chill out. Lay on the couch. Stare out a window. Stare at a wall. Relax.
   
5. It is okay to live on pizza and ice cream for a day or two.
   
6. But don't forego a daily multivitamin. No need to compound heartache with symptoms of nutritional deficiency.
   
7. And after a day or two, drag yourself back into the kitchen and remind yourself what fine things vegetables are.
   
8. Do not watch depressing movies. Do not watch rom-coms, either.
   
9. Do not listen to happy or sad love songs. At least, not until they are less irritating.
   
10. Be the type of girl who is resilient enough to buy herself flowers. (They will help. Really.)
    

Nutritional Healing--how magnesium changed my life.

Have you ever had health problems so unsettling that when you went to bed at night, you sometimes weren't sure if you were going to wake up again?

Disclaimer: This post is merely a personal experience, and not to be taken as, or in place of medical advice. If you are unwell, don't put off going to the doctor or skip treatment because of what you read here; my story may be totally inapplicable to your circumstances. Don't mess around with your health.

A little over a year ago, my heart started acting up. It started very gradually, and at first I thought it was just my imagination. When I was at rest--reading a book, sitting at the computer--I was suddenly conscious of my heartbeat all the time. Then, sometimes it would feel like it was beating unevenly--long, short short, long, long, pause, short short short. As it became more pronounced, sometimes it felt like my heart was literally doing somersaults behind my sternum.

It was seriously freaky, and it seemed to keep getting worse. 

In June or July, I started going to the walk-in clinic. The doctor wasn't too concerned. . .He asked, does exertion bring it on? No. Do you ever feel short of breath? No. Ever faint, or almost faint? No, not that either. . . I mentioned that hyperthyroidism runs on one side of my family, so could it be some sort of tachycardia associated with that? That piqued his interest, and they ran blood tests, but my thyroid was normal.

My heart also never bothered to act up whenever I was actually at the doctor's office. So he said avoid caffeine, get some exercise, you're fine, but come back if it starts happening again.

(I felt like vindicating myself. It's not like I'm a couch potato, and surely one cup of coffee a day shouldn't be overloading my system, right???)

Well, after another visit or two (Hi, doc. Me again...) they decided to put a heart monitor on me for two weeks. He said it was mainly just to put my mind at rest. (Ha. As if this mind rests.)

The results from that came back, and the doctor said that my heart every once in awhile adds in an extra beat. And if it comes too fast after the last beat, it's basically pumping empty space, and that's what I'm feeling with the whole somersault-y skipped beat thing.

Then he said, It's common and harmless. Don't worry about it.

Um. Okay, so my heart feels like it is convulsing and turning over in my chest, but that's common so don't worry about it?

Well, dude, easier said than done.

I wasn't very satisfied with this "answer" to my problems. Why should a 24 year old girl randomly develop an irregular heartbeat and be told it's normal? And then, just to live with it because it's not doing any harm?

I mean, it was doing at least a little harm, even if just psychologically.

A girl can get a little neurotic when it's ten at night, and she's alone in her apartment, gripping her sheets as her heart flip-flops around like a hooked fish, and wondering how many days it would take for someone to discover her body if her heart decided to stop beating during the night. . .

But what can ya do? I wore the heart monitor, had the blood tests, got the t-shirt. . .the insurance was already trying to get out of paying some of the bigger bills. . .

Well, you know that saying about throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks?

Okay, I'm not recommending this approach, so don't try it and then sue me or anything when it doesn't work for you, but I had a bunch of theories about my problem and started trying to get to the bottom of them. Electrolytes? Hormones? I dabbled here and there. . .Researched vitamins and minerals and herbs. . .Changed the staples of my diet. . .

The biggest thing I did was to make an account at SparkPeople, and start obsessively tracking my daily food intake, and ALL the vitamins and minerals they let you track. (They were the best site I found for tracking vitamins and minerals, in particular. I've mentioned it before.)

Even if you eat healthy food, you may not be eating the right proportions for completely adequate nutrition.

You can tweet that if you want.

Sure you eat your whole grains and plenty of fruits and vegetables. There may be one or two vitamins and minerals, though, that just don't pop up in your diet enough.

And the lack of them may be, if not obviously making you sick, at least keeping you from feeling optimally healthy.

I found out that, by eating what I normally eat, I have a REALLY hard time consuming enough protein, selenium, vitamins B5 and B12, and. . .Magnesium.

So I've changed what I normally eat. I aim for at least one green vegetable per day, and try to eat a little more meat. I snack on nuts and eat a lot of oatmeal. I grab some Greek yogurt when I need a protein boost. And. . . .


For the past couple of months, I have felt ONE HUNDRED PERCENT BETTER!!!!!

YES. It totally deserves the all-caps and exclamation points.

It was honestly getting to the point where I couldn't remember the last time my heart had bugged me.

Then, over the past couple days I slacked off, ate a ton of pizza and less "good" stuff, and consumed WAY more sodium and caffeine than I had been. Boom. The heart wobbles have come mildly back. But I'm self-medicating with peanut butter and oats, so it's all good.

I think my heart issues are/were probably linked to low magnesium. When you consider the ways in which magnesium and estrogen are connected (and all the crazy estrogen-mimicking chemicals present in our daily life...) it all REALLY begins to fit. (Here, here, and here are three interesting reads.)

Is this not awesome? (In kind of a scary, disturbing way?)

What you eat can have a HUGE impact on your health. For half of last year, I walked around feeling right at death's door. Would I ever feel like a normal, healthy young adult again?

I am pleased to report...Yes!

So I just wanted to throw this out here. If you're not satisfied with your health, or have weird symptoms that doctors brush off, it can NEVER hurt to improve your nutrition (in addition to proper medical advice and care, of course,) and just might prove life-changing. :)

Have you ever noticed direct correlations between your diet and your health? Share your story.


Shared at: Thank Your Body Thursday 

A Lesson in Frugal Eating

A large, echoing void. A vacant chasm. A strangely luminous abyss. . . .This is my refrigerator today. Can you relate?

It seems like I encounter this image about once a week, usually at 7:30PM right in the middle of four or five exhausting workdays.

Now, normally this results in a dreary errand out for frozen pizza and microwaveable soup. But today I was already in my pajamas. And my feet hurt, I'm tellin' ya!

So I decided I was going to come up with some sort of breakfast and lunch for tomorrow out of the available resources or die trying.

What do we have to work with?

• 8 oz cream cheese
• a tub of Country Crock spread
• a colander of thawing strawberries
• 5 eggs
• some almond milk
• a Brita water pitcher
• a heckuva lot of lemon juice
• and 2 random jars of half-used spaghetti sauce.

Never mind what's in the door; it's just a bunch of condiments and a couple sticks of butter.

Normally, I don't make it past the depressing refrigerator inventory. I give up, give in, cry uncle, and buy pizza.

This time, I gave the freezer a more searching look.  The most prominent features are a couple bags of pecans, a cup or two of Quaker oats, a frozen banana, too much ice cream, and some wheat berries that I can't find a use for.

Hmmm. You can't bring an ice cream sundae to work for lunch, folks. 

But behind it all, I found one leftover cod filet, some slightly freezer burnt broccoli, and exactly 3/4 of a cup of uncooked wild rice.

*A Fanfare of Trumpets*

Lunch! By George, I think we've got it!

Breakfast was even easier to figure out. A fried egg, and some oatmeal spruced up with strawberries. Boom!

So out of the seeming nothingness of my leftover groceries, I have found meals. Not only meals, but healthy meals.

Healthier meals than if I had gone to the grocery store in a fit of laziness and desperation and bought pizza and microwaveable soup, in fact.

Moral of the Story

When you're looking in your fridge, groaning, "Awww, there's nothing to eat!!" . . .

Square your shoulders, look again, think outside of the box, and don't go out and buy "instant," over-processed, easy food.

Because you probably don't have to.

And hey, by using up your odds and ends instead of making an extra trip out, you've probably saved an extra $10 on your monthly grocery budget!

Saturday Things....

The Poog, circa 2005.

If I was a good blogger, I would come to you today with mason jar crafts and wreaths made out of baby ducklings.

Um. All I have for you is a picture of a cat looking at a piano. Here ya go.

. . .

I am very tempted to launch into a lengthy excuse/rant/whine, but it would involve heavy objects, backaches, fatigue, chaos, and be of no interest to anyone.

So before I go to work in half an hour (Yes! SO excited!) (Not.) here's just a few whatnots from my latelys.

• On the moving front, I've cancelled my newspaper subscription. One item off the mile-long to-do list, anyway. Do not despise small beginnings, people.
• Also been cleaning out the freezer. So far, this has resulted in an increased consumption of broccoli, and the making of this really awesome peach raspberry cobbler. 
• I have a TON of frozen strawberries. Still trying to figure out how to use them all up--Here's some strawberryful recipe inspiration!
• Loving these two blogs at the moment.....Fennel and Fern (pretty pictures!) and Wilder Quarterly (always green, often fascinating.)
• I listened to Josh Ritter obsessively when I was in college. Rediscovered my Animal Years CD..... I loved this song. It still rather speaks to me. (I can't resist the allusion to Huckleberry Finn in the last stanza. It gets my inner geek every time.)
• I went to the library for a book of Theodore Roosevelt's writing the other day--I had seen a quote from his speech/essay "Strenuous Living" and wanted to read its context--and, predictably, came out with not one book, but five. 
• As if I have time to read. Ha.
• Someday, I will probably write a post about how SparkPeople's food tracker revolutionized my eating habits and magnesium turned my life around. Yay for vitamins and minerals!
• But not today.
• In case you were wondering about that compelling Theodore Roosevelt quote: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” Yeah! Go get 'em, tiger.
• The end.

So, what's your favorite recipe to use up frozen strawberries?

Preparing to Move: The First Steps

Re-locating. Chances are you've done this a few times. . .

Cardboard. Tape. Chaos.

What a pain. 

To the left, there, you see my to-do list. The middle two columns are all related to my upcoming move. Um. . .yeah. It's officially taking over my life.

It's still two months out, but it's not too early to get started.

Here are some tips . . .

I've learned from experience that you can focus on some things way ahead of time to simplify the process later on.

1. Empty the pantry. Food is a bother to transport even if you're just moving a couple blocks. Try to eat as much of what's in your freezer, fridge, and cupboards as you can, and quit stocking up on extras!
2. Declutter. You know that stack of magazines? Junk mail? Random stuff in your closet? Under the bathroom sink? If it's not important enough to justify the work of packing, hauling, and unpacking. . .Pitch it.
3. Downsize. There's no time like the present! Break out your inner minimalist. Think about articles of furniture that you could sell on craigslist to off-set the cost of the move. . .Clothes you could donate to thrift stores. . .Books you could donate to your local used bookstore. . .
4. Start collecting boxes and packing materials. If you subscribe to a newspaper, don't throw any of it away or cancel it until you have enough to wrap all your fragile items. If you get a package in the mail, save the box and bubble wrap!
5. Pack what you can when you can. Chances are, there are things you can start packing ahead of time that you won't miss. Out of season clothes. . .The contents of bookshelves and closets. . .
6. Make a list and tape it somewhere in-your-face. Your mind is probably swimming. (Sinking?) So much to do. Get it all on paper and add to it as things occur to you so you don't forget anything!
7. Re-read your lease and inspection paperwork. If you rent, make sure you know how much advance notice of your intent to vacate your landlord requires. See who's responsible for shampooing the carpet.  And if your landlord went over the condition and cleanliness of your apartment with you when you moved in, find that paperwork again to help you leave things in the same or better condition.
8. Those crazy drip-pans on your stove covered in burnt-on gunk? Buy new ones and install them the day you leave. Seriously. They never look decent again once stained.
9. Make a list of all the places you'll need to change your address, and all the bills and utilities you'll need to cancel. I find this is easiest to do if you simply make a list of all your incoming mail for a month as it arrives. 
10. Eat ice cream. Hey. You can't take it with you.

How do you prepare to move?