Rebuild from Depression Blog

I am remembering a line from the movie “Armageddon” where the oil drillers are being shuttled into space to break up the asteroid threatening the Earth. As they belt up and prepare to be launched into space, one driller asks the other

“How are you feeling?”

“95% excitement and 5% fear. Or is it 95% fear and 5% excitement? I don’t know and that’s part of what makes it so exciting!”

I don’t know if I am feeling more fear or excitement, but it’s definitely a combination of the two.

It looks like we may well be having a baby in December.

When I shared our news with my dad (“I’m having a baby, Dad.”), he said, “Oh really? What kind of baby?”

“I am hoping for a humanoid baby.”

The conversation meandered in a strange sort of way and I finally said,

“Dad, I’m pregnant.”

The look of shock on his face was priceless.

When your only pregnancy resulted in psychosis, when that child reaches grade school, and when you are pressing the boundaries of human fertility, this sort of news can catch people off guard.

We are a baby-deficient family, however, with only two children now on my mom’s side, one of which was born just two weeks ago. My husband’s parents have a total of three grandchildren. My own parents have one grandchild and no others in sight until now. They share the 95% excitement.

Estate planning

Continue reading "95% excitement and 5% fear: A baby in December" »

Mom has been gardening up a storm and wrote the following about tomatoes:

Some heirlooms show up in nurseries this time of year, but not many varieties. After several discouraging years of hunting, I decided to mail-order several varieties. Being able to order one of each variety allows us to taste-test and determine our short-list.

From past garden adventures we know that green zebra, pineapple and purple Russian are sure winners. We also know that IF we can find these tomatoes at the farmers’ market, they are selling for about $4 a pound. Shoot, we eat a couple of pounds in one meal!

Heirlooms still have great flavor and interesting colors. The hybrids are developed to be heavy producing, easy handling money-makers. I go for flavor and looks! You will, too, when you find the varieties that fit you palate.

With heirlooms we also have the opportunity to collect seed. Most heirlooms remain true, even when planted near other varieties. That is probably the only reason we still have heirlooms!

Now these tiny mail-order plants have arrived about a month too early, in the middle of April. Spring is late in stabilizing here in the Sierra Nevada foothills, witnessed by last week’s brief snow.

Our solution:
We put the plants into 4-inch pots with good soil and placed the pots under a small greenhouse cover. The plants joined some seedlings of tomatoes from our own saved seed of last season. This is so much fun…almost addictive.
The greenhouse cover was a gift from my brother when he moved to a home that had a full greenhouse set up. Before his gift, I used simple solutions like rigging up some temporary sides to the tomato shelter, then covering it with 4mil plastic. Both solutions work well.

Temperatures are finally becoming more stable and the soil is warming, so we will move the tomato guests into the orchard to grow beneath some young fruit trees. Lots of sun there. And, tomatoes are sun-lovers.

I’m already thinking about some of the dishes I’ll put together with those tomato treasures. Nothing is more beautiful than chunks of Green Zebra, Red Mortgage Lifter, and Yellow Pineapple tossed together with crushed garlic, olive oil, a bit of vinegar, ribbons of basil, and crushed sea salt. Oh my!

Happy belated Mother's Day all you mothers! Here's a Mother's Day card for you.

I spent the weekend in the garden and on the hammock. It doesn't get much better than that. :)

Excited that the road was open to the High Sierra, I packed sandwiches, salad, a six year old, and a sixty-eight year old into my car and headed to the Trail of a Hundred Giants. We got within two miles of the trail when we were stopped by “Road Closed” signs. A sign of spring here is the lack of these "Road Closed" signs, so we've got another week or two of "winter."

With cold sandwiches and few options, we drove about fifteen minutes down the only open road to Johnsondale and happened upon their privately-owned, timeshare-like ranch. For the cost of interest in buying into the ranch, we were able to picnic on the grounds.

It is a cowboy ranch with a shooting range, archery range, horseback riding, fishing, boating, tennis, and volleyball for members. On Saturday nights you can two-step in the saloon to the live country music. The security guard tells me that the saloon does not come complete with drunken brawls.

As we picnicked, I said, “Dad, you really need to buy into this place. Surely you could bring guests.” I discussed how reasonable the buy-in cost would be for him.

As we packed the car, we ran into the general manager: Dennis, my dad’s good friend from a whole other time in his life. Dennis gave us the skinny on the property, along with a cabin tour.

We missed the Trail and must wait longer for spring to begin officially around here, but as a nice tradeoff, I could be on horseback sooner than expected.

In our part of California we enjoy all four seasons but of course none really start when the calendar says they will. Winter starts in October when I start the first fire in the woodstove. (Someone suggested on this blog that I cannot hunt bear in winter since they are hibernating. “If a fire is in the woodstove, it’s winter.”) Spring begins when we have just about had our last fire of the season.

Here are some key signs that spring has begun:

• Someone mistakenly leaves a window or door open over night and it doesn’t really matter.
  
• I lose my sweater regularly because I keep taking it off.
  
• Mom is ready to move seedlings from the greenhouse to the garden.

But the key for me is that the road to the High Sierra is open and I can return to my redwood office. It’s been passable for a couple of weeks but the Sheriff promised me a ticket if he found me up there. Today Frederick and I will take the 30-minute drive to the Giant Sequoia grove, the Trail of a Hundred Giants. I’ll pack lunches, a computer for me, and a project for him. We’ll work for the better part of an hour (just to say we did) and spend the rest of the time exploring. My husband will be home trying to figure out how to sell a book from this website. It sounds like a great deal to me. :)

We haven’t received our fiscal-stimulus checks around here yet, but we’ve all been bantering about what to do with them. Here are some ideas:

My dad:

“I am putting mine in the bank because that’s exactly what the government doesn’t want me to do with it.”

My mom:

“I may cash mine and put the cash under the mattress. Or perhaps I’ll buy garden seeds.”

My husband:

“I am going to save everyone a lot of time and send my check directly to China.”

Me:

“I’m going to Disneyland.”

I do try to do my part as an American.

Nutritional deficiencies are a big part of my own depression story. I spent the formative years of my life on low fat diets of bagels and imitation cheeses. Nary an Omega-3 was to be found. I proceeded through life managing nonetheless until my body was charged with making an entire new person. As my son’s brain developed in my womb, he sucked the limited Omega-3 stores out of me and I went bananas from the lack. I produced the food that grew him out of his infancy as well, a food that also required Omega-3 fatty acids and many other nutrients. We just celebrated his sixth birthday and I am finally feeling recovered from my task of producing him.

Omega 3 fatty acids were a critical thing I was deficient in and until I fixed that deficiency, all of the talk therapy in the world would not have gotten me very far above zero. It may have helped keep me out of a deeper hole, but it would not be effective on its own in improving my health.

What has happened as I face the rest of my life and establish structures for myself to maintain my mental health, I realize that the key for all of us is to determine what we are most deficient in that we can change. Focus on changing that. The food nutrients are in our control. It is a fairly easy place to begin.

What I am finding more challenging for myself is engaging in positive behaviors like rest and relaxation. It is sometimes difficult to give ourselves what we really need. Here are some of my reflections on my own life and I am working hard to integrate them into my lifestyle.

Every day should have a wee bit of vacation in it.

Continue reading "What are you most deficient in? That’s your key" »

In the two weeks since I posted from the coast, my son and I have finally returned from our trip. We didn’t actually stay for two weeks but we did turn two days into four. We didn’t really need an excuse to overstay our plans, but I did end up with computer problems and thought “I could go home and have computer problems or I could have them right here on the coast.” Really, the coast is a much better place to be when you cannot use your computer.

Frederick and I took a “self-portrait” on the beach in Cambria.

I am remembering the coast because it's been a bit tough around here since we got back. We were all sick for a few days and thought that was terrible. I knew I would be posting about raw milk and thought that was terrible too. Life has a way of putting things in perspective: we received word that a family member had six months to live, about ten days ago now. Five days ago we were told he had one week and he lasted another day and a half. The generation above me is struggling quite a bit, though the family is expecting a much-anticipated baby this very week. Thank God for babies.

This is one of those times when you have to focus on taking care of yourself and your family. We're behind on everything (as usual), including our commitments on this website. I was just looking at pictures from my son's birthday party Sunday (because cute kids always help) and found some cool pictures from our trip to the coast.

Continue reading "Personal update, coast pictures" »

If you read this blog even a little bit, you know that I am pretty passionate about raw milk. I worked on California’s AB1735 campaign back in October and have the last remaining gallon of milk from the 2006 recall of Organic Pastures milk for E. coli 0157:H7. I tried to mail the milk to David Gumpert at The Complete Patient, but he thought that the existence of the milk brought too much attention to the issue of pathogens in raw milk and, later, he poked me over being too caught up in raw milk minutiae. Boy, is he right. I vowed here a month or two ago that I would stop thinking about E. coli.

My problem is that stuff just keeps coming up that nearly throws me into coronary arrest. My husband calls it “entertainment,” but raw milk doesn’t do a lot for him in the first place, so I guess he can just be entertained. I am not entertained at all.

I listened to the raw milk hearings here in the state the other night and I find it hard to listen to them without a great deal of cynicism because of the elephant in the raw milk room. In fact, I have been having a hard time not letting that cynicism eat me up. Raw milk is supposed to be health-giving, after all. For every enzyme or bacteria it may have added to my digestive system, it has stolen a second of my sleep as well, so I'll just get to it and tell the story.

If you are arriving to the story late, I’ll include a bit of background before I get to the bad stuff.

The children
On September 21, 2006, my sister called to tell me that Organic Pastures raw milk was recalled because of possible bacteria contamination. Surrounding that recall, six children were sickened by the pathogenic E. coli 0157:H7 and all six apparently had raw milk. I say “apparently,” because it’s actually more complicated. To the best of my knowledge, the outbreak looked like this:

Continue reading "The elephant in the raw milk room: Was the right dairy tested for E. coli in 2006?" »

Last Starbucks spotted: 3 p.m. Wednesday somewhere near Santa Maria.

~~~~~
12:30 p.m. Thursday, hole-in-the-wall café in Cayucos

In an area where everyone is either a poor vagabond or a millionaire and it's nearly impossible to tell the difference, a local I liked for the millionaire category announced over a lunch of smoked fish,

"Hey man, if I had twenty bucks, I'd be headed to the border. That's RICH!"

~~~~~
2:00 p.m., somewhere north of Cayucos

“Mama, I lost my pink sea glass. Pull over! Hurry!”

~~~~~
2:30 p.m., San Simeon

“Mama, take a picture of me up here.”

“Frederick, at least pretend you need to be up on the top of the car to see the elephant seals.”

~~~~~
3:30 p.m., Cambria’s Rainbow Bean Coffee House

Sign on the wall:

Coffee contains compounds found beneficial to good health.
Anecdotal studies of regular Rainbow Bean customers indicate that a scone and coffee three times a week makes you A BETTER LOVER.

Quick call home: “Hey Sander, I think I need to stay on the coast longer. Wire money for coffee and scones.”

~~~~~
6:00 p.m., a lodge in Morro Bay

“Frederick and I need a room for the night and we have decided we may never go home. We need your best rate on a room.”