scattered unrelated ruminations

1. My 2 yr old has Strep throat. It started with a high fever on Friday, then lethargy, then yucky white pus patches on his tonsils. I've been fighting it with minced garlic mixed in honey every 3 hours, plus echinacea & vit. C every 4. Within hours of starting the garlic there was improvement! He now smells to high heaven like garlic though. And also, I have an eye infection. My third in as many months. This is truly ridiculous. I am obviously doing something wrong to my eyeballs.

2. Due to these health issues I had to miss out on all my nifty weekend plans. My friend Bret had a straw bale house plastering party (I kept likening it to an Amish barn raising, only smearing mud all over their family's walls together instead, hee). I was so looking forward to spending time on her groovy little homestead, making friends with her goats & playing in mud. Bummer. I also had to skip out on berry picking with my cousin. I am impatient to get some strawberries in my fabulous new dehydrator!

2. I learned from Lisa that corn is in fact a totally freakish food that can't reproduce on its own. An excerpt from THIS article: "Maize is an incredibly diverse crop," says Tiffin. It's also one that has become completely dependent on humans because it cannot disperse its own seeds. "If humans were to stop planting it, it would cease to exist." Wow! That's just like turkeys. Our modern day turkeys are bred with such ginormous breast that they are unable to mount each other for mating & rely entirely on insemination by humans. On a related note, did you know that English Bulldogs almost always require a C-Section to have their puppies because we have bred them to have such freakishly large heads that the mama dog can't even birth them?!

3. I am going to start up another blog, one devoted to our home school which recently acquired the name rootsong. This makes me roll my eyes at myself because I don't have enough time to do with this blog what I'd like but now I'm going to add another. It sounds so fun though! Plus it will give me a place to save all my favorite home school related links & goodies.

4. Nicole/zipadeedoula posted a great article about Vit. D, sun & sunblock in the comments area of my post called "The dilemma with sunblock". Since I can't find a copy of the article to link to, I will just recommend you scroll down to that post & read her comment. It's a fascinating article. And it tells me to go spend a solid 20 minutes every single hot summer day out in the noon-day sun!

5. My brain went off on a tangent the other day while I was contemplating this whole "sense of entitlement" thing we Americans so suffer from (see my post about killing your television). I was realizing that I think that plays a huge part in the high numbers of divorce these days. We all have these huge egos & think we naturally *deserve* to live perfectly comfortable lives. I'm sure not saying that I'm immune to this, plus I have been divorced (!), but I think that decades in the past, when our lives were just generally more difficult, we were better at accepting & tolerating situations that were not "comfortable" or perfectly fun all the time. These days, when its all about YOU (YouTube, MySpace, Iphone, etc etc etc), & we are surrounded by luxuries & conveniences, it's easy to fall into thinking that it actually IS all about us! And we are too quick to get angry, get offended & give up. I don't think humans in our society are very good at seeing the big picture, in real life AND in marriage. And our egos are huge.

6. I've been feeling so suffocated by political correctness lately that I have been taking a break from the message boards at Mothering.com. I've been a member there for 6+ years and have posted well over 3,000 times. Heh. But I dunno. I used to feel that it was really "my community". Lately I've been feeling disillusioned by the whole place & have questioned what my goals are there. I was already feeling tired of the PC craze in our country these days *before* I got booed right off the page at Mothering for acknowledging that it is illegal immigration bringing our population numbers up, not people like me who are "moms of many". I was also called a bigot, prejudiced & racist for believing that there are differences in the races. There was a total explosion of craziness & the whole thread was closed. It was so weird. And all of this with my friends, folks I know in real life. But then, it's a website for parents that believe in peaceful parenting & "natural family living". No one ever said our politics had to match up! So yeah, whatever. :/

7. That just means I've been spending more time over at Homesteading Today! ;) Yesterday I got my copy of Backwoods Home's "special preparedness issue". It's way cool. I've been making lists ever since. ;) We need a better first aid kit, more stored foods, way more misc. household things (stock up on pinkeye meds. anyone?) & I crave knowledge! About everything! I am such a nerd! I have read entire websites on how to raise & butcher & cook rabbits. Not that I even have a rabbit! lol But just in case I ever need to...

8. I've been meaning to post this, 20 things that are more dangerous to children than lead paint in Mattel toys. She makes a GREAT point in that there are so many every day things we take for granted that are totally toxic, but I do think she could have added a few things that are worse than, like, children's vitamins. I'm surprised she left PVC off the list! (as in, your shower curtain, rubber duckies, and all baby toys that are "squishy & pliable" like teethers & such) And she should have made a bigger deal of factory farmed meats... but all in all an eye opening reading. I AM going to add a "Question EVERYTHING" list of links to my blog page... when I can find the time! lol

9. During the time I have been typing this our broiling hot summer day has been overtaken by a crazy thunder storm! But it's still about 80 degrees outside! We just went out to play in it.

10. I am cyber stalking the people that created Pockets of the Future. Every moment I can I am reading their whole blog like a book. I am in love with nearly everything they say & do. They are a family with 6 kids who live out on 4 acres in Virginia, are on a Hindu path, homeschool Charlotte Mason style, homestead with beloved cows & other critters, gush a lot of gratitude, & are way into the politics of food. Minus the part about living in Virginia, I'd say that in 5 or 10 years, that sentence just might describe US just perfectly. :p So yeah, I want to be just like them when I grow up.

I could continue my scattered ramblings well into the night but my kids are very loudly demanding that I do no such thing.