Why Am I Living in a Cave? -- Gone #Paleo

Okay, I'm not really living in a cave, I've merely committed myself to a personal challenge to follow the Paleo Diet for 30-days.

What is this crazy diet, you ask? Well, the Paleo Diet, otherwise known as the Caveman Diet or the Hunter-Gatherer Diet, is all about eating the way the cavemen would have before they invented McDonald's and figured out how to mill grains and make processed foods.

The "contemporary" Paleolithic diet consists mainly of grass-fed pasture raised meats, fish, vegetables, fruit, roots and nuts, and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar and processed oils. Sounds pretty simple doesn't it? And a little restrictive if you're a Diet-Coke-guzzling, convenient-food-eating, chocolate-makes-my-afternoon-complete kind of girl!

But then again I always remember when I take the time to buy and prepare foods, I LIKE chicken off my grill! I love me some steamed vegetables. Fruits, nuts? Yes, please! I can do this!

But why? And why go hard-core right out of the gate? Don't many books/sites/blogs recommend easing into it? Sure, many do and that might be a recommended approach for many - BUT I'm kind of an addict by nature. If you let me continue with some things it gives me too much room. I know myself. If I can prove to myself I can make it through 30-days, then I can find a way to continue while balancing in other kinds of food as well.

And if I don't commit to go all the way, there is an excuse every single day. Birthday lunch here, going away party there, happy hour with old friend here, luncheon there ... there's nothing to stop me from making the whole month a cheat day if I didn't fight ALL temptations.

But why consider this as a diet option at all? Yes, I'm kind of following a trend. I started doing Crossfit workouts late last year and the Paleo Diet is something that community embraces and supports. The more I've read about it and the more success stories I've heard (more energy, skin better, allergies better, sleep better, waist fat reduced, etc, etc.) the more I realized it wouldn't hurt to give it a go.

I'm 41. I've been on and off from running over the years -- more injured than not the last few years. The magic of Crossfit gave me strength and self-healing enough to return to running. I'm running with new friends and going faster and doing more training miles than I ever have. I'm doing yoga or walking or biking or Crossfit WODs when I'm not running (sometimes sweating 2x a day!). And yet, I'm continuing to struggle with my weight - particularly belly fat.

I'm not smoking and I cut back on my Diet Coke and yet I still have trouble breathing sometimes when I'm running. My allergies have been driving me crazy from sinus pain to itching skin. I'm tired. My digestive system -- as it always has been -- is completely out of whack. I've gone on a few diet plans and lose a few pounds and then I'm stuck. And then I feel bloated. My body is driving me crazy.

So why not? I'm going to give this a go and see how I feel in 30 days. If it's working, I keep going. I determine what compromises I will allow myself so I can eat out occasionally or how frequently I allow myself a "moment". Maybe I slowly introduce a few things in that I felt I was missing and see if that changes anything? I don't know yet. First I need to climb this mountain.

I'm on Day 3 of my 30-Day adventure. No miracle cures yet! My skin is still itching ... I'm still having trouble with focus. But I just started.

I'm not hungry. I haven't had any major withdrawal problems yet. Yesterday was a rough day for me - completely overwhelmed with work and having trouble keeping myself focused and really wanted my 3 pm pick-me-up in the form of a silver and red frosty can. I listened to the office next to me as they opened the giant bag of peanut m&ms and talked at great length about them. But I did okay. I'm even off gum and mints right now too which is somewhere I might turn if I having a craving and interestingly enough, I'm okay there too.

I think I need to remove cashews as an option for me. In the pyramid of foods, lean protein is the base (and what I should eat the most of) followed by vegetables, then fruit, then nuts & fat. I might have been a little off-proportioned with the cashews yesterday and will watch that. Very important tool: sparkling water. I get the bubbles without the junk. Nice to keep on hand: lemons, jazzes up the constant stream of just water all day and makes a good flavoring on the steamed vegetables instead of butter. I'm happy to report it's going well.

P.S. according to my readings WINE (in of course appropriate quantities) is OKAY. Wine & Gluten-free beer - yippeee! Grok totally could have picked grapes and put them in a skin sack and made himself some tasty vino so why not me too?

Captain Cavewoman ... over and out on Day 3!

Today, I enter the cave ...

Today is Day One of my 30-Day Paleo challenge and I'm already unprepared! I've done the reading, made the lists and got wrapped up in too many weekend tasks to do the shopping. But I'm starting anyway. I sent Brad home with a bag of non-paleo temptations from my fridge and cupboard and I'm left with fruit & nuts.

The plan: fruit for breakfast. Almonds for snack. Subway salad for lunch. Shop straight after work. I will report my progress and sins (which I hope not to have) on this very blog spot!

If I go Cavewoman, should I stop shaving my legs?

Starting Over ... again

I've decided to return to my much neglected blog ... and where to begin? Just starting over took a couple weeks. First things first ... we still are "One Girl, Two Dogs and a Mission" ... unfortunately. While away from this blog, a NEW dog joined our clan last year (more on him later) and we became a THREE dog household. But then a few months ago I lost my beautiful Anna.

Before I could start blogging, I had to create a new header and change Anna's picture for Mehmet. Crap, that was hard! Now she has her own spot on the sidebar.

I loved my childhood pets and I love my current puppies but there was something special about Anna. She had such a gentle soul. She didn't need constant attention but always kept her eye on me. When I was upset or crying, she was the first to notice and would come to my side and just look at me with those eyes.



Polly & Anna came to me as a package deal 9 years ago and literally changed my life. When they both came home with me as puppies, they had a bad case of kennel cough which a vet originally mistook as Anna having Parvo and told me then she might not live long. It was an emotional and an expensive start to our fabulous life together! Given her original prognosis, I guess I should be happy we had almost 9 years together -- but it was just too short.

A year or so ago after coming back from a teeth cleaning procedure, Anna's IV spot was slow to heal. And then we noticed that months after her summer haircut, her bountiful curls never grew back. It was then that the Vet diagnosed her with Cushing's Disease. We spent the next year battling it and trying treatment and watching her get thinner and thinner. Unfortunately she just didn't respond to the treatments that normally work for canine Cushing's disease. But even when battling it, she still maintained a zest for life and a love to walk. Right up until the day she spiraled downward. A day before my birthday this year, I had to make the hardest decision of my life and we said good-bye to her.

I'll never know if the disease and maybe a pituitary tumor had taken over or if we had slowly poisoned her with the last treatment dose - and that really kills me. But I can't go back and change or fix anything and so I just focus on the good times, the memories and all the love she gave me.

There is such an empty hole without her - wow! Thank GOD for Polly and Mehmet. I have no idea how I would have made it through those first few weeks if I didn't have two other furry family members to cuddle with and giggle at. I still feel like she's with us when we're walking in the park. She was a great dog - great companion and is greatly missed. I couldn't resurrect this blog without her remaining an important part of it.

Love you, Annabella!! xoxo

Note to the manufacturers of meds for "lady pain"

Perhaps you should test the packaging a bit. Do you really think I want to struggle over freeing the pill from its little plastic bubble and have to resort to finding a sharp object which may cause me to cut the pill into pieces? Where's your social consciousness? Think of the neighbors!

Signed,
Crabby

Gotta love people!

Here's an email received in the Webmaster emailbox:

"new payment system is suck, i dont know what kind of stupid created."

Boy, do I feel dumb.

AZ Republic, Really??

I know. Times are tough for the print industry. Everyone is going online for their news - everyone thinks they can WRITE their own news - newspapers and reporters are hurting.

One would think they would really cater to their subscribers to keep them on board, yes? I get the AZ Republic in town. I've tried the daily, but while I have good intents most of it ends up in my recycle bin unfolded and I read what I can online with a few searches and quite a bit of skimming. I do subscribe to the Sunday delivery and occasionally the whole weekend delivery package. But I like to subscribe when I want to subscribe. I get the postcard deal, I subscribe and I pay in advance for usually a period of 5-6 months. Ideally, they may send me a NEW offer and ask me to renew my subscription OR perhaps call once or twice to upgrade me to a bigger package. I would go along with that. I might even put up with the calls in my oh-so-few evening hours.

What the Republic does instead of offering you the chance to re-subscribe is send you a BILL as if you already owe them for a service you haven't really asked for nor have you received any of it. And they hope you don't notice and just pay it and go on. I hate that. I didn't sign up for an autorenew, I made no commitment other than to receive what I already paid for. So I usually get stubborn and let it lapse and then sign up and pay in advance the next time I get around to it.

This last time I paid in July for a subscription that should have taken me into December. Sometime end of October/early November I stopped getting the paper. It took me a week or so to realize it wasn't a neighbor walking off with my Sunday ads - the deliveries just stopped. So I called them - it took me a while to get a person through their computer system (which did NOT have an account for me by phone or address and would NOT let me pass by until I entered information it liked!). The nice customer service boy discovered I indeed still had "credit" - he had no idea why the deliveries stopped and he put it back in motion. It took a full week or so to kick back in (so one would think I would be credited for the time lost and take my newspapers to the full end of year, right?). But no - the paper stopped around the first week in December. The new "bill" arrived in the mail and then the stalker calls began.

And by stalker calls, I mean the paper would call once a day and an agent would listen to my answering machine reminding callers I'm on the "do not call list" and then they would hang up leaving me a machine full of dial-tones or noises of a call center followed by dial tones. Then last week I got "the letter" - the letter which told me I owed them $22 and they have made efforts to reach me to no avail. Seriously?

So today I took a precious lunch hour and called them. I spent about 8 minutes wrestling with the machine who could not find my account. Each time the machine agreed to transfer me to an agent, it would hang up on me. 3 calls later, I went to the switchboard who had to transfer me (successfully, whew!) to an agent. This girl was a sweetheart. She looked at my account and told me I definitively owed them $22. I asked her to please read my record aloud and tell me when they last received payment and how long that should have taken me to. She then started reading starting with the July payment and then somehow my account showed I was down $92 and then even and then had a credit of $22 and then owed $22. After she got to that point she said, "You know? You're taken care of. I will even out your account and put a note in to stop the calls." I pointed out to her that the "attempts to contact me" involved nightly hangups on my machine, to which she said "oh, that's really bad."

She then tried to sell me on the much easier "Easy Pay" system (yeah, I'm giving you guys my CREDIT CARD to do whatever you will with!). I asked her to explain it better and this is what I got: With Easy Pay I agree to a $17/week fee. They take $17 from my account and each day the paper is successfully delivered, they remove an amount from my account. When the account gets to $0, they bill me again and I keep working my way to $0. If I want to cancel, I have to be sure to contact them BEFORE I get to $0. I asked if there was a tool to check my account balance - no. Seriously? It's this difficult.

She was very nice, I give her credit for that. I told her that while I enjoy the paper, the process is disturbing and for that, I cannot subscribe.

So long story short - don't blame the internet for the demise of the printed newspaper. I blame the muddy, poorly planned red tape. Sheeeeesh!

It's a Very Bearded Christmas

This year went FAST. And my nephews are growing up WAY too fast. It pains me. Thank God I'm not growing up so quickly!

In November I started hounding my sister for "the list" from my nephews so I could start the shopping. I long for the days when we bought just fun toys that took up lots of room, made lots of noise and were all sorts of colors. And well, I could play with them. Now it's all about the video games and I find myself wandering around the video department clutching a list and looking as lost as every other grown-up there. We all take turns with the poor kid who works there: "What's the difference between a PS2, a PS3 and this PSP thing?" - "What do you do with this?" - "What ELSE do I need to buy to make this work?" - "Do you have anything that doesn't involve mass murdering?"

Anyway, so I got my list this year and it was the usual list of games for various systems that I know I'm going to need help finding. But then I got to William's list and it filled me with pure delight. He wanted some spy gear (which I discovered was actually Spy Gear™), some Ben 10 Alien Force stuff, a Nerf Gun (yea! simple! that can't be hard, right??); a Spartan costume and a fake beard. Yes, a fake beard. How random is that??

The Nerf gun was NOT easy - I bought 3 before I found the "right" one in stock. I went to two toys stores, 3 Targets and TWO Game Stops before I finished finding all their loot. (And now I have a car full of post-holiday returns to make). But the most fun was my trip to the Mardi Gras costume shop for the fake beard. I bought two one for William and one for his younger brother in case they want to form a bearded gang or something.

I'm happy to say that every time I heard him on the phone - the beard was in his top 3 favorite gifts. Yea! Still some fun in the holiday. And NO, the boys didn't let me break any of their video games.