It Begins. Apparently.

I think I may have successfully rewired myself, but also kind of accidentally.

This past weekend was spent going positively wild with Chopstixx (a local place), pizza, and hot dogs.

“Going wild” here meaning “I ate this.”

It made me sick. I’m not sure if it was an accumulation of grease or not eating well at all, but I was very nauseated by Saturday night, and it shocked me, because that didn’t used to happen. I mean, I used to eat like that with no consequence, and we get Chopstixx (five dollar lunch specials!) a lot. Maybe I caught something and just had bad timing with eating. Either way, I steered clear of the deep fried foods when me and fiance went to the NC State Fair on Tuesday.

So I guess that’s how we’re gonna do things, then. Protein, veggies, and fruit. I’m fine with it, honestly. Those things taste good, and are food.

It really all put a little more emphasis on how much I want to switch to being as natural about things as I can.  I’m running low on shampoo, but I have a ton of shampoo samples that I can use while working out the best natural stuff (also so I can clear out my cabinet.) My biggest motivator? I just lost my grandfather last month to cancer that grew slowly, over years, until it infested his whole body and took him from us three weeks after it was discovered.

I want to be healthy, but health is more than being increasingly faster on a run. It isn’t the treatment of a symptom; it has to be about the whole body, and I really believe that includes the stuff I never thought about before, like makeup, shampoo, and toothpaste.

I am truthfully, pretty excited. It’s like realizing that I breathe a little easier (throat is less sticky) when I run in the rain. (Am I a frog? Oh my word guys, I’m a frog….), and I like feeling better overall. I don’t really know if making mascara in my kitchen will have any benefit other than not involving a grueling removal process (looking at you, Great Lash), but knowing what’s in the things I’m putting on my face and brushing around on my teeth sounds pretty great. Call it paranoia. I just call it fun.

Hey, maybe I can make some cute packaging for it all. I love packaging.

Bayou Vampires are Mosquitoes, Right?

I remember making some comment one time about how someone should write a book where the vampires turn into mosquitoes. You know, instead of the cliche of bats. Clever!

Only thing is, there’s a big difference between the reasons why vampire bats drink blood and why mosquitoes drink blood.

Female mosquitoes will drink blood because it’s part of their reproductive process. They have to drink blood, if they want baby mosquitoes (and they’re the only ones that do, so give a girl a break, right?) Males don’t bite or ingest blood, just stuff like nectar.

Both male and female vampire bats drink blood. A lot of it. Like half their body weight at a time. Blood is their food source, and their only food source, and they have to drink it, or the little cuties will die.

Just look at that million-watt smile. Squee.

 

Knowing both these facts would prevent me from writing the perfect jokey book about mosquito vampires.

No, I’m not a stickler for facts being super correct in fantasy or science fiction, but more than once, while working on my own book, not being able to work out a sticky plot point has brought my personal writing process to a screeching halt, sometimes for days or weeks. I can’t just keep on going with the rest of the book, to work it out later. It has to be fixed, and it has to be fixed immediately. I don’t like plot holes, disappearing characters, or anything that doesn’t make sense.

I think it’s the hardest part of independent publishing, and I’ve seen it a few times. Characters that just go away, mentioned in passing but never seen again. Random things with no reason. Deus ex machina advice from mentors who come from nowhere. (Yeah, I’ve had to get rid of some of that in what I write.)

Yes. Writing a book that’s decent at all can be slow going. I’ve learned to work it out a little more efficiently,  using Notepad or an actual notebook or just talking about it to my fiance. It helps to have some sort of sounding board, because for me, just sitting and thinking real hard does not work. I get too distracted by everything.

I like when things work. I love when they work well. I like to read a book and get to any well-executed part and be all wide-eyed and go “Duuuuude.” Stories that just work make me really appreciative, because I enjoy intelligent fiction. (Note I didn’t say “I only read intelligent fiction.” After all, Velveeta shells and cheese isn’t really good for you, but it is pretty delicious.)

Back to work. My characters need me. Also Tuesday is designated Zombie Day. Up early down as much Walking Dead as I can, then a nice chaotic workout with Zombies Run, so I need to get a head start.

I also want to see just how large the zombie tag in the tag cloud can get.

Being Good

To start off, I’m happy to introduce my new running shoes!

My heels are very happy.

I said something last week in regards to food, and I found it quite curious. Granted, I’ve been saying it all my life, probably a leftover from the 90s. I think we were at Chick-fil-A. Instead of getting chicken strips and a salad, I ordered a chicken sandwich and waffle fries. My reasoning, as it came out of my mouth, was “I’ve been good today, so I’ll get that.”

I “behaved.” I “was good.”

I’ve changed the way I eat for the benefit of my health, and for some reason, I still ordered as if I was on a diet.

And I’m not.

I eat healthy food (a lot of fruits, veggies, and protein) because they taste good and they’re real. I run because it’s fun to get in shape while fleeing zombies.

But it was a little freaky to find out that part of my brain is still in the mode of “you’re on a diet.”

As if eating real food that tastes good is bad behavior.

No, I didn’t feel any guilt, because I don’t eat like that all the time and I’ve done some programming tweaks on how I think. It was just weird and almost something another person might have said. A joke. 

But I’m done thinking of a healthy lifestyle as some sort of moral obligation that I am guilted into.

I’m Not Comfortable With This Cereal…

There’s a sense of glamor associated with how bright and shiny you can make yourself. Teeth, hair, skin, doesn’t matter, it just needs to reflect as much light as is physically possible.

And you can have it all these days, straight out of a tube.

I think a friend’s blog post nudged my brain further in this direction, but it realy was weeks ago when I started thinking more about what I put in my body.

The scene, Aldi. The chore (and yes, it is a chore that I hate), grocery shopping. Just was gonna pick up a few things. Eggs, half-and-half, almond milk, some cereal, some Aldi-brand Fiber One type bars. I also grabbed some kefir. At the time, my grandfather was in the hospital with a mass in his colon (that turned out to be much more extensive, of course.) It was by the grace of God, I really think, that I had the random thought that most of what I had in my hands was processed. Unwhole. I stopped and peered at the labels on the bars and the cereal.

And said to my fiance, quite promptly, “This is way too processed.” I put the grainy stuff back and grabbed a bunch of fruit from the produce section.

What was I about to put in my body?

And what goes on it, every day, for that matter?

I think if I’d stuck with chemistry as my major in college, I wouldn’t be able to say “I don’t recognize anything on this label.” But I didn’t, and I don’t recognize a whole lot of the stuff in processed food, in my makeup, in lotion and soap and shampoo and everything that can be and is absorbed into my skin.

It weirds me out a lot that I have to use Vaseline to take my mascara off. I mean yes, oil does desolve oil, but after having a tube of waterproof that washed off with soap, standing there with tight skin around my freshly washed, still mascara coated eyelashes was a little jarring.

I found out the hard way that Aldi cream, formulated for slightly older skin, breaks my twentysomething face out. I don’t know what’s in that either, so to avoid stripping my face of sebum in the morning, after I have been in the bed and not gotten dirty at all, I just use witch hazel. Works for me.

So after reading lots of thought-provoking and informative articles about the possibly (and probably) harmful ingredients (what even is “fragrance”?) in mainstream, drugstore cosmetics and body care, I’m totally feeling like homemade might be the thing to ease into.

This blog here has some really cool recipes and advices, all of which I’m itching to try. I’ll probably use them. If it can save me money and help me avoid prologed exposure to grocery shopping (one of my least favorite things to do, still serious) I’m in.

A few motivators do play into this. First, I like makeup. Sephora’s main draw for me is the sheer amount of color inside, and I’m a sucker for neat packaging. (I think book people just are in general.) But I’d like to make my own and maybe reach a point where I don’t need it so much, and I can only reach that point by eating healthy food and putting skin-friendly things on my face. A lot of stuff isn’t skin friendly, it turns out.

Second, I’ve bumped up my running to 5 days a week instead of three. I’m faster, I have more stamina, and I just plain like it) but why should I sabotage all that work (almost to the end of C25K!) by putting gross things in and on my body on a daily basis? I’ve been mostly going without wheat for a while now (though I still have a little) and trying to eat meats, veggies, and fruits. Not really a diet, but I feel better.

Third, I want to have a healthy house and healthy babies.

Fourth, again, I cannot stand grocery shopping. It’s boring, and tedious, and there are a lot of things I’d rather do in my spare time instead, like read or write or make things or play Super Mario Galaxy or walk Pippa.

Fifth, money. I don’t have a ton of it to start with, and an awful lot of my little bit goes to school loans every month. If I can make our food items do double duty as cleaner, makeup, lotion, deodorant, toothpaste, and laundry detergent, I’m there.

So there. I’m going to gradually wean myself off the synthetic stuff (like I’ve been trying to do with food) and see where that takes me.

I think this is going to be quite fun.