I had noticed that my body tended to feel better during the summer, but I attributed that to dryer, warmer weather and being more active.

There has certainly been a buzz about Vitamin D over the last few years.  I have been hearing about it from my father-in-law, who is an MD, my L. Ac. and have also seen articles about it in alternative medicine journals.  I heard that there had been an increase in rickets, links to cancer prevention, and cardiovascular disease.  What I didn’t know is that it has also been linked to fibromyalgia and back pain.

A few months ago, I was sick-sick-sick, in order to kick it, I decided to start taking a few extra supplements, including Vitamin D (in higher amounts than the RDA).  Once I was better, I continued for good measure.

I had noticed a major reduction in shoulder and back pain-about 85%, actually. I attributed this to the fact that I had been working less, but as time went on and I got back up to a normal workload, my shoulder pain didn’t come back, they were still sore, but the pain remained relatively low.  I was also sleeping better because my lower back (which had me turning regularly) was also much better.

My back problems are old and chronic.  I have had episodes of pain since I was in my early 20’s, but I have also been seriously athletic since then, participating in either long distance cycling or serious running and hiking for most of that time.  Less activity and two disc herniations later, I have had a weak, numb and achey left leg for the last year.  My back was getting generally better before I started taking D, but the trajectory of improvement has increased and so has my quality of life.

About a month after I started supplementing my D, I had my level tested and it came out at 40.  That number is adequate, but not particularly high, so I suspect that I did start out with a deficiency that was leading to my body’s inability to deal with the inflammation brought up by my physically challenging lifestyle.

The image is borrowed from the Pine Street Foundation, I highly recommend taking the time to read and understand their longish article on Vitamin D.

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The magic tripod that allows me to maintain a highly productive lifestyle collapsed. Some Exercise, Decent Diet and Stress Management (are the three legs) stopped happening. I KNEW it was a mistake, but I scheduled two big events on the same weekend. I cooked for the anarchist cafe AND organized and held a big meeting for a new project that I am launching. And of course, the former exposed me to a whole lot of germs in black hoodies.

So, it is sort of a case of hard-to-prevent bad timing, but even before that, there were too many commitments with not enough fun. Even some of the things that used to be fun turned into areas of stress and obligation for me.  I did start dropping some things before I got sick, but there are some things that I just couldn’t budge without a crisis. Meanwhile, Zombie mom posted about her own work-a-holic nature, which made me raise my eyebrow, but it is easy for me to deny this since I don’t have just one “job” and most of my projects don’t pay money.

This all fits in with a parenting article that I read recently about the importance of unstructured family time. In particular, parenting in the last decade faces critiques for not providing enough outlets for children to entertain themselves and, in turn, has limited their initiative in  creative play.  What is best for kids developmentally (and maybe for people in general?) is having more unstructured family time, where you are just chilling out and someone says, “Hey, let’s play Monopoly” or “I am gonna build a cabin out of these Lincoln Logs” or “Wow, mom, the fridge is really dirty! Can I clean it?”  Of course, this is about not having your self and your kids in too many commitments.  I really don’t wan to be a mom that ignores her family because she has to work all the time or a soccer mom that lives and breathes to drive her kid to the next activity. Not to mention, that I want to MODEL myself as an adult that takes care of herself, making time for my own dental appointments and taking time to sit in the sun with a book and a cup of tea every once in a while.

A while back, my therapist gave me a great tool to frame this all in.  It is sort of a zen approach, where I think of all the activities that I participate in without obligation and as something that I am choosing to do right now, not necessarily forever.  Both setting my commitments up that way (with actual or potential end dates), but also giving myself the opportunity to change my mind about things as I go feels ridiculously revolutionary.

Being sick for a month also gave me a clean start. When I had to put everything on hold to vomit and lie shivering in bed, it was a reality check that I COULD do that.  My clients love me and they waited for me, I am not so poor that I can’t miss some work time every once in a while.  It was sort of like hitting a reset button. My diet cleaned up, my routines disappeared, and gee golly, the world didn’t freakin stop and my life actually didn’t change that much. Oh, I did lose 5 pounds.

So the upshot is cool new projects that will hopefully move my career in a good direction and a break (and exodus?) from the projects that aren’t serving me.  A renewed intention to focus on my career, both serving my clients and also moving my work in a direction that will be sustainable for me on a longer term.

More importantly, was the not-so-gentle reminder to take care of myself. Oh, and hang out with my dogs more, who seem to be magical converters of stress and obligation into joyful, frolicky runs, furry-soft cuddles and long lazy nights of sleep.

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Enter poison oak.  I had gotten poison oak a couple of times after owning the woods for many years, thinking that I was immune.  Well, you know the school of thought that says the more you are exposed to it, the worse your allergy becomes?  I am a believer.  It started with getting a rash in an area of contact and later became something that spread quickly to areas of my body that were completely covered.  Not only that, but I became so sensitive that I would have no direct contact with it, wipe my dogs down when I got home and I would still get it.  My favorite story is that I did brush against it and got it through my shirt.  I washed the shirt and I got it again.  This actually happened 4 more times until I washed it with tecnu (it was one of my favorite shirts) and could again wear it without consequence.  (Tecnu really is amazing, folks. Apparently, nobody really knows why it works. But IMHO, it is a miracle. If I know I have been exposed to PO and wash immediately with when I get home, I do NOT get a rash!)

In late 2007, I did a bunch of web research about building immunity since I could not imagine giving up geocaching or hiking in the hills.  Being in the hills for long, sometimes all day walks was part of my identity; it is what I did for myself to feel like myself.  I began taking rhus tox homeopathically on my own.

Along the way, I had seen the webpage for a local homeopath who treated poison oak. When I saw his name again in a Sierra Club magazine, I decided to make the call.  He was fantastic, but unfortunately…it didn’t work.  We tried everything and it only seemed to get worse.  I decided the only thing that I could do was cold turkey it. No more hills at all. I wasn’t going to be exposed and neither were my dogs.

Meanwhile, I had several other skin outbreaks that I assumed were  a fungus.  They were itchy and scaly (some areas worse than others). I treated them as such and put anti-fungal cream on. Ate endless raw garlic, grapefruit seed extract and mostly cut sugars out.  It, too ONLY GOT WORSE!  I had treated fungus on my own several times, so I knew something was amiss.  I was at my wits end at this point and went to a dermatologist.  He felt it was a clear cut case of psoriasis.  He took a biopsy (this is now sometime in 2008) and since things like this are never really simple for me, it went through a number of different tests because it did show markers of a rare kind of lymphoma.  In the end, they decided that it was psoriasis and the steroid cream that they prescribed worked. The dermatologist said that psoriasis can run many different courses in people and that it was very common for someone my age getting it for the first time to just go away again.

End of story?  Of course not.

I never really thought of myself as vain until I got a rash on my face.  For most of 2009, my face was somewhere between dry- irritated and swollen- red-oozing.   I was very surprised how much it disturbed me and how self-conscious I became. Using a topical steroid would help, but only for a week or so.  Eventually, my skin became reactive to metal, I had trouble wearing my glasses and my wedding ring.  Although psoriasis typically spares the face, my dermatologist and I both attributed my issues to that, for lack of any better explanation.

I tried a few things to help including changing my facial products and accupuncture, but when my face was better, it didn’t seem to last long and I was beginning to feel more dependent on steroids.  I began to wonder if what I was dealing with was eczema and not a product of psoriasis.  I thought back to all of they lifestyle and diet changes that I have underwent about the same time that I started having issues with my face.  After a bit of research I found this:

The most common food triggers for eczema are eggs, milk, peanuts, soy, and wheat. Among these, eggs are probably associated the most strongly with eczema.

Well, I hate to give such a complicated story a anti-climatic ending, but I think I am allergic to eggs.  About two weeks ago, I eliminated them from my diet almost completely and my skin has been remarkably improved.  It is still too soon to tell whether it will stay improved, but it has not felt this good in some time, especially for this long of a time.

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Day 1: We left town in the late morning, stopping by Peets for some Fair Trade ground coffee. At a roadside produce stand in Manteca, we bought Doradita’s potato chips from El Monte, CA, locally grown nuts, blueberries and cherries along with some other treats.

We arrived at the house, which we expected to be a tract townhome, since we looked at a map and saw that it a huge complex. When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised. Even though the place is a gated community (and huge) there were obvious differences between the places and a huge amount of space between each one. Plus, there are many vacant lots, which adds to the effect of open space. About 20 minutes after we arrived, we noticed a baby deer about 5 feet away from the garage.

We decided to go to dinner and the grocery store that night. Dinner was at the Iron Door Saloon, the oldest bar in California. I discovered before the trip that it was actually owned by the family of a friend, who happened to be working the night that we went.

But first, we arrived around 4pm and dinner wasn’t to start until 5. We had already spent a few minutes looking around the tiny town. Not being shoppers, there wasn’t much to entice us. It was time for some geocaching! I had thought that I had seen a cache in town when I was researching, but maybe it had been archived. We headed East, toward Yosemite and started grabbing one by one, as long as they were close to Hwy 120. We visited a Hanging Tree, which apparently had killed many folks back in the gold rush days. We grabbed a couple of others when I saw that we were near one called Spelunkelite, with a terrain difficulty of 4. Well, I was wearing a dress and clogs to go out to dinner and have been having back problems, so I knew it was a sketchy proposition, but still couldn’t resist a cave. There were many warnings in the cache description about having 2 flashlights and having to crouch and being very careful. It also had a nudge in the cache description to the area that the cache was. Unfortunately, it also suggested the number of steps required to get the cache. When we arrived at the described area, we hadn’t really had to crouch, didn’t really need a light and had taken less than half of the steps that the cache page recommended. So, we thought we had to keep going in order to find it. J- started to, but decided he was not up for doing it alone. This part DID involve crouching and one light per person (when we only had one). I went instead. When I got to the recommended number of steps, I started looking to no avail, so I went about 20 steps further, found nothing and looked all the way back. I was still looking when I arrived at Jeff and found it about 10 feet from where he had been sitting. I had made the mistake of carrying my purse over my shoulder and my hat in my hand. I had dropped my hat at some point and my purse (which wasn’t in great shape before) was a little wet and covered in cave dust. My hands were VERY dirty.

So, back at the restaurant at 6 we washed up and the menu looked great. We kept it simple with fish and chips, salad and water. The fish and chips were well done with a light beer-type batter. We had been disappointed recently when going to a new shi-shi southern restaurant in Oakland with the breading, so we were relieved to like this.

The next day, we invented a new term: “Bourdain-worthy”. We have read several of Anthony Bourdain books and also enjoyed several of his TV shows. His taste are not necessarily hoity-toity, although one of the things he enjoys is when a chef devotes particular attention the his dishes that makes them perfect. We were in Sonora and stopped at the Blackthorn Grill, which focuses on local and sustainably grown food. One of the dishes that we ordered was the special: Grilled Citrus and Cilantro half game hen salad. Definitely Bourdain-worthy. This piece of meat was cooked so absolutely perfectly. The skin was crispy, salty and a little sour. It was served on a bed of arugula and we couldn’t imagine that piece of meat being seasoned, cooked or serve any better.

Later in the trip, we went to Rainbow Pools. A client had told me about this place and it is such a find. It is a day use area maintained by the National Forest Service and is mostly a place for locals, there is no sign or anything. It is a wonderful spot off the Tuolumne that has a swimming hole and cliff jumping. When we were there, a summer camp was there and it was people-watching at its finest.

On our last day, we went to visit the spectacular Yosemite Valley. We ate at The Grill in Yosemite Village. The meal was not great, but it could have been worse. The did offer a veggie burger (although I can’t recommend it) and they served sweet potato fries instead of french fries, which was a nice touch.

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Sometimes they say that they don’t like something, but when faced with it, they seem to eat most things. T-6, in particular is adamant about needing to try things before she forms her opinion about them. And she is basically a human garbage disposal. She will finish T-4’s plate and her own.

One of the great things about them that they are very accomodating for changes of plans. They go along with the flow. We were using my gps to navigate the area looking for pizza. All lf the pizza places that were around when I was kid are gone! We drove by 3 different pizza places that were all delivery and take-out only…no tables. We decided to give up on pizza and get Mexican food. They didn’t freak out at the change in plans. How impressive! Well, in the end, we found pizza, anyways.

J- and I pretty much always order to share. We plan to swap the plates once or twice throughout the meal and maybe pick off of each other’s plates. T-6 and T-4 seemed to appreciate this, as well and in each meal that we have had, we have gotten at least one or two things to share. T-4 actually seems more interested in giving her food away than eating it herself a lot of the time.

We knew that it was love when we took the girls to Japanese food. I knew that they liked Chinese and once again, in an area that we didn’t know, we used my GPS to bring us to Chinese. Turns out, there was a Japanese restaurant right next door. We saw they had a kids menu and noodles, so we decided to go for it.

First was playing with chopsticks and using the chopsticks to feed everyone tofu. Then was drinking the miso soup directly from the bowl. Then, all of the cute little plates and dipping sauces began to arrive. Woohoo…kid AND foodie heaven!! We did have to put the chopsticks away at this point. But, we filled up their plates with noodles, tempura, unagi, teriyaki and even spinach salad. Let the feast begin!

I can’t wait to bring them to Ethiopian food…

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rating: 5 of 5 stars
I certainly haven’t tried every recipe in this book, but I have tried enough to know that it is spot on for what it is offering, which is a variety of grubbing, basic vegetarian recipes that provide some quantity. You won’t feed hundreds with these recipes, but you will feed 10.

I don’t use cookbooks very often. When I do, I am looking for inspiration for something new to try or I am looking for a basis on which to apply my own creative process upon. Even when I do use a cookbook, I rarely prepare the recipe exactly as directed.

There are a number of things that are especially cool about Punk Cookery.

First is Ian’s commentary. Although we are from different ends of the country, we are from the same scene. Like Ian, these recipes have history, which he shares with the user.

Second is that these recipes are good for a beginner or an experienced cook. I admit that a lot of times I pull out Betty Crocker when I am baking and modify these old school recipes to be vegan. But how do you do that for Lentil Loaf or Chocolate Tofu Pie? Well, you don’t…but this book has these recipes that can be followed to the T by a beginner or modified by an experienced cook.

Finally, there are simply some really cool and unusual recipes in here. My favorite section is the salads, which includes recipes for Sweet Pea Guacamole, Wild Rice & Artichoke, Greek Potatoes and more. I think there are probably recipes from about 8 different cultures. I also have Ian’s Ethiopian-Inspired Cooking, which I have been wanting to try.

ooh…I gotta go wisk my herbed polenta before it burns…


View all my reviews.

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I have always been skeptical of green cars, maybe because I am grounded as a bike activist, an anti-car person, and I was still pretty attached to those ideas when cars started gaining in popularity as a form of ecological activism and collaboration.  Although I was skeptical, I really never did the work to justify my thoughts, so I always kept my mouth shut.  Luckily, my friend Alexis has done some of the work to articulate issues around biofuel use, specifically in relation to food production in his article on realitysandwich.com (I love that name!). 

He makes an argument that the current emergence of food shortage and threat of famine is an issue of wealth.  New shortages can specifically be linked to the increasing market demand for biofuels.  Even in historic cases of famines attributed to natural disasters, the famine-ravished countries have continued exporting food, while people within the country starved.   Traditional land used for food harvesting or native agriculture have been razed in most places to export to wealthier nations, in turn making the poor country dependent on cheaper, less nutritious grain imports.  This continues to be true, but now the international poor are also competing with  the automobiles of the wealthy for increasingly scarce calories. 

Then came along the Prius.  I had learned long ago that the most “environmental” way to own a car was to drive as little a possible and when behind the wheel to go gently and keep that car running in your own ownership as long as possible.  Somehow, I got turned onto an article that discussed the fact that a Hummer was more ecologically sound than a Prius (I can’t find the article that I read originally, but this is a newer one).  It came down to a few issues 1)The battery 2) The expected lifespan of the car (3 is outdated with the newer hummers, it was that the Humvee parts were stock parts and not specialty-made). 

Reducing our dependency on them and getting rid of cars (for the most part, at least) is the only thing that will solve all of the problems that we have because of them.  There may be accomodations that solve some of the problems or temporarily relieve the impact, but ultimately biofuels or any other modification to cars is going to be a band-aid. (I would make an exception for the one solar powered car that I rode in at Eastwind Community, but I actually think that biking was a more effective way of getting around and hauling.)

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Interestingly, I had a week a couple of weeks ago in which I was regularly expressing that I was happy. I remember that week feeling very busy and productive, but not tired. I also remembered my dreams every night that week (which is not common for me), which were rich, interesting and vivid and involved many of my close friends.

J- attributed this elatedness to the longer days that we have been seeing. I would not dispute this since I know that sun affects my well-being dramatically. I am and have always been a summer girl, feeling better physically and emotionally when I am out more and have more light in my life.

I primarily attribute the change to a new proactiveness that I have harnessed. I have found much more focus in my projects. I have really narrowed down what is important to me and have made progress in integrating these things into choices around the ways that I am spending my time. This has led to concrete things getting accomplished, as well as a clear directional path ahead that I have lacked and sought for some time.

In turn, this has been a great opportunity to restructure my time and better my time management. For a while, my life has been a bit of a checkerboard, taking work when I can, running my dogs when I can, fitting in errands and self-care. This has been great for having a flexible schedule and occasionally spontaneous moments, but as I get busier, it has meant more running between things and less time to focus on any particular thing. Right now, I am in a transition process to the new schedule that I have created, but even having it as a possibility has seemed like a relief.

These issues are all, actually just background issues. I think that they provide the frame of reference for simply allowing the POTENTIAL for happiness. These things have been contributing to an overall sense of satisfaction and purpose that have my head clear and give me a general sense of well-being.

–I suppose that I should clarify this a bit since I would not want to give the impression that a sense of well being is so simple on a blog that is, in part, about radical politics. I have also been experiencing a great deal of angst lately upon thinking about the state of the world. I have been considering the community of my future children as one that is so destroyed by our culture that my children will be living with me, a complete stranger; and how wrong that is. I have been noticing the election and having very vivid fears about how bad things can actually get and having a lot of sadness around the lack of satisfactory options that I have for rectifying what the government is doing. I suppose that the sense of well-being that I am referring to a sense that I am simply doing my best and am satisfied with the frames of reference that I am making my choices within and that my current trajectory is sustainable.–

So, with all of that being said, I see that the actual manifestations of happiness come to me when I am laughing, eating a good meal or playing with my dogs. Of course, these are simply examples (and the most frequent ones). If I am having a bad day, I really just need to take my dogs to the park and watch them gleefully run around or hang out with A- or R- who will pretty much make me laugh whenever I see them.

While self-satisfaction creates the platform for my happiness, being truly happy is ultimately a collective process.

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I think we had walked in for a quick bite a few years ago before we went to see a movie across the street at the Elmwood Theater. It didn’t really stick with us as memorable. Recently, our neighbor B- told us about it and how she and her husband M- often get takeout because of its price.

Now, we can’t get enough of it.  I did recently buy some sushi-making supplies so that we can start making our own.  We’ll see how much we make it to the store to keep the fillings in stock!!

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Anyhoo, I started searching around on the internet to get some cake ideas and googled, what else, but “Anarchy Cake”. Well, I had been looking for design ideas, but it turns out there is recipe for anarchy cake. I loved what I found about it. This is from the website of food columnist and cookbook author Sara Perry.

” Faith Willinger improvised this unusual cake when she had a rather empty larder and company coming for dinner. It was immediately christened Anarchy Cake because, she writes, “With recipes, as with so many things, Italians are basically anarchists.” You might think the anarchy is in putting salad dressing ingredients-olive oil and balsamic vinegar-in the cake, but it goes beyond that. The idea is that you act like an Italian, which is to say you pretty much do whatever you want and it will still come out beautifully-the sign of a really good recipe.”

Of course, this struck me for many reasons. I am Italian and an anarchist and the idea that Italians are basically anarchists I find pretty great. I love the fact that food and anarchist politics are combined in this lovely way. I ended up altering the recipe a great deal. I added cocoa powder, to make the base cake chocolate. I used dried fruit rehydrated with water instead of fresh fruit. I substituted sunflower oil and apple cider vinegar for the olive oil and basalmic vinegar and I used corn starch instead of eggs.

I developed a great design idea, which didn’t quite come off as I had envisioned, but still went okay. I had remembered seeing spray on food coloring and I thought it would look like spray paint. So, I would do a fondant-covered cake with an anarchy sign spray paineted on. Well, it kind of did, but it took several coats to get good enough color, so it ended up not really being as neat as I’d hoped. It still turned out. When I get a picture, I will post it here.

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