There's Way Too Much Spring in the Air To Blog

Last week: 1 1/2 feet of snow fell from Sunday to Monday night.

This week: Jude, Noah, Jabin and I planted seeds in our front flower bed and watered them. It was +17 degrees C.

Whoo-HOO!

This time, those winter coats get to STAY in the box, darnit!

Mommy's Fourth Law

"That the number of times you will have to go back into a store to retrieve items your children have left behind (x) is directly proportional to the number of children you brought with you (a), the number of items they brought in (b), and the number of stores you have visited (c), and also inversely proportional to the number of items you went into the store for in the first place (z). If the resulting figure is greater than 2, not all of the items will be retrievable.

Formula:

(a+b+c) /z = x"

On the Idiosyncracies of the Season

Remember when this guy showed up?

Well, there are few things more annoying than a house guest that does not know when he has overstayed his welcome.

Last Monday afternoon I raked a winter's-worth of junk off my front yard.

This Monday afternoon I could take those same photos again--assuming that the snow has actually stopped by then!

It's like Winter doesn't know when it's over, when it's time to pack the bags, move out, and move on. Get over it. Another suitcase, another hall, another hemisphere. It just keeps clinging like a needy, selfish child that never grew up. "Old Man Winter?" Ha! Usually someone that age has more maturity!

I wish I could say this was a-typical behaviour for this season, but it does this pretty much every year.

Yet, like a hopeful fool, I still end up having to pull the winter coats out again from their newly-packed boxes. Every. Single. Year.

Talk about cyclical behaviours...

"Jude and ______ sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"

Today is our day "out and about"--and by "our," I obviously mean the kids and I. And by "out and about," I obviously mean we get to do our errands because this is Payday.

But besides that, Friday morning is Story Time at the library, which we get to most weeks. After that, we usually only have about an hour before Noah needs to go to his afternoon PUF program (I never have figured out what that stands for), so we usually go out for lunch as a "special treat." (Our one meal out a week.)

Today, we had just started eating, when Jude pipes up with a completely unprompted question. The wheels had obviously been turning in his brain on this one for a while.

Jude: Why do you and Daddy talk so much?
Mom: (grinning) 'Cause we like each other. Someday you'll find a girl you like to talk to lots, and you'll probably marry her, too.
Jude: And she'll be my wife?
Mom: Yep. Just make sure whoever it is is your best friend.
Jude: Will we like to talk to each other?
Mom: Yep.
Jude: I don't know what to say!
Mom: It's okay. You've got a long time before you get married.
Jude: Like, what age do you get married at? (He's been saying "Like" at the beginning of sentences a lot lately.)
Mom: Usually sometime after the age of 18, but there is no set age to get married at.
Jude: How do you know when?
Mom: Well, when you find the right person.
Jude: How do you know it's the right person?
Mom: Just make sure you marry your best friend.
Jude: (pauses, then understanding dawns.) Like Emily!
Mom: Yep, like Emily!

Sometimes I wonder what those two are up to when they are playing. Now I'm going to be wondering how soon he is going to propose! :-)

Not Just A Load Of Beans

Last spring, I was reading a book by Kevin Trudeau called Natural Cures They Don't Want You To Know About. In it, he makes a lot of claims that he does not necessarily back up with substantiated proof, which annoys me. It's a good book, but when someone is making claims like that, it would be nice to see references to studies where someone has actually gathered some evidence on the subject.

It was in this book that I first heard anything about the Nazis inventing the microwave, the Russians banning it, and the first time I heard anyone say anything about throwing it out completely. He claimed that microwaving food changes the energy of the food--energy that all things have, created by how our molecules vibrate. If you photograph an apple with Kirlian photography, it's energy pattern is beautiful and round. If you microwave that same apple, then photograph it again, it's energy pattern is rough and jagged and ugly.

I was already aware of the microwave oven's propensity to create cancer-causing free radicals with the way it heated the food, but thought that using it to heat water would still be fine. This was the first time it had ever occurred to me that it might alter something fundamental within the chemical structure of what was being microwaved.

That's when I came to a claim I knew I could check. Kevin Trudeau said that if you try to grow beans with water that had been microwaved, they would not even sprout! I raised an eyebrow, thought about it for a minute, then got to work on an experiment a là Grade 7 Science.

I used navy beans from my cupboard, splitting them into a control group of six, and an experimental group. The first group was watered with Reverse Osmosis filtered water. The second group was watered with RO water that had been microwaved for 1 minute per 8 oz. (or 250 mL - I'm Canadian. That means I'm measurement bi-lingual) and allowed to cool.

What I should not have done, since I was testing this "not sprouting in nuked water" claim, was plant them in the peat pellets (2 per pellet, 3 pellets per tray), which I didn't think of ahead of time. The peat pellets gave them nutrients that the water did not contain.

I heart Peat Pellets. They are so fun.

The beans were planted on March 10. On March 14, when I noticed sprouts of equal sizes in both trays, I thought that the experiment was over, having successfully disproved Trudeau's claim. However, I did not dump the trays, and kept watering them with their own kinds of water. These are my notes from March 18:

"Beans in 'normal' tray have grown and thrived - 2 pellets have sprouts that are a minimum of 5 inches, while the third has a 1 inch sprout. In the 'microwaved' tray, the sprouts have remained at a height of less than 1 inch for days, while the third has none at all."

Photo from March 16.

Photo from March 18, as well as two following.

Control Group

Microwaved water

That means that in the normal water tray, all three pellets had sprouts--two of them had sprouted both of the beans they contained. They thrived and grew tall. In the microwaved water tray, only two of the pellets had one sprout each, which were stunted, brown around the edges, and did not thrive at all. Other than the type of water used, all other conditions were the same for both groups.

At this point, I believe I moved them from my office to my living room so they could get more sunlight, at which time my 18-month-old decided they would look better upside-down on the floor than on the coffee table. End of experiment.

I do intend to repeat this experiment, sprouting the beans in water only. If any of you try this, please leave your comments and results on this post, or e-mail them to me and I will post them here for you.

Needless to say, it was enough evidence for me to be concerned. After that, I started getting a little fanatical about not using the microwave, even asking for my food to be un-microwaved in restaurants. In doing so, I discovered that what may only take a few seconds to re-heat in the microwave really only takes a few minutes on the stove.

What health sacrifices are we making for a few minutes' convenience? What's the rush--so we can go watch T.V.? If we are in such a hurry to heat up our food, perhaps we are moving too fast!

My Life May Not Be As Small As It Seems

This caught me in the tear ducts just now. It was like God just knew I needed to hear this today.

"One Heartbeat At A Time"
by Steven Curtis Chapman (from the album This Moment)

You're up all night with a screaming baby
You run all day at the speed of life
And every day you feel a little bit less
Like the beautiful woman you are

So you fall into bed when you run out of hours
And you wonder if anything worth doing got done
Oh, maybe you just don't know
Or maybe you've forgotten

You, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time
Making history with every touch and every smile
Oh, you, you may not see it now
But I believe that time will tell
How you, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time

With every "I know you can do it"
Every tear that you kiss away
So many little things that seem to go unnoticed
They're just like the drops of rain over time
They become a river

And you, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time
Making history with every touch and every smile
Oh, you, you may not see it now
But I believe that time will tell
How you, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time

You're beautiful
You're beautiful
How you're changing the world
You're changing the world

You, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time
Making history with every touch and every smile
Oh, you, you may not see it now
But I believe that time will tell
How you, you are changing the world
Oh, I believe that you
You are changing the world
One little heartbeat
At a time

And you're changing the world

A Brief History of the Microwave Oven

An excerpt from an article on NaturalNews.com by Christopher Gussa.

Microwave Ovens: The Curse of Convenience: It turns out it was the Nazis who actually invented these ovens. They were used in their mobile support calling them the “radiomissor”. These ovens were to be used for the invasion of Russia. By using electronic equipment for preparation of meals on a mass scale, the logistical problem of cooking fuels would have been eliminated, as well as the convenience of producing edible products in a greatly reduced time-factor.

After the war, the Allies discovered medical research done by the Germans on microwave ovens. These documents, along with some working microwave ovens, were transferred to the United States War Department and classified for reference and "further scientific investigation". The Russians had also retrieved some microwave ovens and now have thorough research on their biological effects. As a result, their use was outlawed in the Soviet Union (for a year or two). The Soviets issued an international warning on the health hazards, both biological and environmental, of microwave ovens and similar frequency electronic devices.

After the war, Dr. Percy Spencer, a self-taught engineer with the Raytheon Corporation, claimed to have “invented” the microwave oven in 1946. The Raytheon Corporation did actually file the first U.S. patent on one. The first ones were called Radar Ranges in 1954. Thank You Raytheon, but I like your missiles much better!

The following is a summary of the Russian investigations published by the Atlantis Rising Educational Center in Portland, Oregon.

Carcinogens were formed in virtually all foods tested. No test food was subjected to more microwaving than necessary to accomplish the purpose, i.e., cooking, thawing, or heating to ensure sanitary ingestion.

Here's a summary of some of the results:

* Microwaving prepared meats sufficiently to ensure sanitary ingestion caused formation of d-Nitrosodiethanolamines, a well-known carcinogen.

* Microwaving milk and cereal grains converted some of their amino acids into carcinogens.

* Thawing frozen fruits converted their glucoside and galactoside containing fractions into carcinogenic substances.

* Extremely short exposure of raw, cooked or frozen vegetables converted their plant alkaloids into carcinogens.

* Carcinogenic free radicals were formed in microwaved plants, especially root vegetables.

How Microwave Ovens Work:

All microwave ovens contain a magnetron which is a tube in which electrons are affected by magnetic and electric fields. They produce micro wavelength radiation at about 2450 Mega Hertz (MHz) or 2.45 Giga Hertz (GHz). This microwave radiation interacts with the molecules in food. The wave energy inside the oven changes polarity from positive to negative with each cycle of the wave. These changes of polarity happen millions of times every second. Food molecules (especially the molecules of water) have a positive and negative end just like a magnet has a north and a south polarity.

As these microwaves generated from the magnetron bombard the food, they cause the polar molecules to rotate at the same frequency millions of times a second. This is major agitation. (Much less agitation is used in pharmaceutical drug labs to separate or isolate molecules in the making of just about any thing they want). This agitation creates the molecular friction, which heats up the food. The friction also causes substantial damage to the surrounding molecules, often tearing them apart or forcefully deforming them. The scientific name for this deformation is "structural isomerism".

In Comparative Study of Food Prepared Conventionally and in the Microwave Oven, published by Raum & Zelt in 1992, it states:

"Production of unnatural molecules is inevitable. Naturally occurring amino acids have been observed to undergo isomeric changes (changes in shape morphing) as well as transformation into toxic forms, under the impact of microwaves produced in ovens. One short-term study found significant and disturbing changes in the blood of individuals consuming microwaved milk and vegetables. Eight volunteers ate various combinations of the same foods cooked different ways. All foods that were processed through the microwave ovens caused changes in the blood of the volunteers. Hemoglobin levels decreased and overall white cell levels and cholesterol levels increased. Lymphocytes decreased. Luminescent (light-emitting) bacteria were employed to detect energetic changes in the blood. Significant increases were found in the luminescence of these bacteria when exposed to blood serum obtained after the consumption of microwaved food."

'Til There Was You

There were bells on a hill
But I never heard them ringing
No I never heard them at all
'Til there was you

There were birds in the sky
But I never saw them winging
No I never saw them at all
'Til there was you

Then there was music and wonderful roses,
They tell me,
In sweet fragrant meadows of dawn and dew

There was love all around
But I never heard it singing
No I never heard it at all
'Til there was you

-Meredith Wilson, "The Music Man"

Classy and Green

I am teaching two classes this upcoming weekend at our local scrapbooking retreat. One is about Journaling, and one is called "Recycled Embellishments". I have just finished the class project demo layout for the Embellishment class, and am now displaying it for your viewing pleasure.


The pull-out tag behind the photo will eventually list all of the books that I read in 2008. So far, there is only one on there. Pretty sad, I know.

I was absolutely thrilled at my good fortune today when I rescued a beautiful old-edition encyclopedia from it's imminent fate of being thrown into a dumpster, which now has had at least one page immortalized on this scrapbook layout. This weekend, several more of its pages will be wending their way around town into people's photo albums.

I estimate that the total cost of this layout was $1.50. Compare this to an average layout utilizing all pre-purchased embellishments and accents, which can run anywhere from $4 to $10 a page. Yet another instance where being "green" actually saves you money--it even applies to scrapbooking!

Mini-contest: The first person to guess what the flower petals are made of will get a prize from moi. (Those people, like my husband, who already know the answer because I told them straight out, please refrain from responding.)

Following is the journaling from the page:

"Ever since I was a small child, I have been an avid reader. At one point, I usually had anywhere from 1-4 books 'on the go' at one time. Since becoming a busy homemaker and self-employed entrepreneur, I have had less and less time to indulge in hours-long reading sessions, so most of my reading time is in bits and pieces—a few snippets of a magazine article while using the bathroom (“Mommy needs a break,” Jason tells the kids when I head in there.) I end up saving up my “books-to-read” until the blissful, lazy days of summer arrive and I can afford the time indulged in reading. This photo is of a few books I plan to go through this summer. Also on the list: Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, The Missing Gospels by Bock, and perhaps re-read some old, long-abandoned favourites such as The Snow Queen, Braveheart, Pay It Forward, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I can hardly wait to immerse myself in words, words, words!

"How am I going to do this with all the other things I also want to accomplish this summer?

"Answer: One book at a time."

My New Favourite Quote

"Life's second great delight (after homemade ice cream) was packing a bag. You put your favorite Fruit Loops t-shirt—the one you got for sending in 5 Proofs of Purchase plus Shipping and Handling—into your bag and zipped it up. Your shirt stays in your bag thinking it's just a regular old drawer or something, but the secret is you're not sitting still. Maybe hours or a whole day later you unzip your bag and surprise: your shirt is in the mountains or at the beach, and it will never be a regular old play shirt again. Clothes never recover from being packed."

Heather Anne Hogan, Aunt Opal

Organization Pirate

After three days riding the high seas of chaos, where things always get much worse before they get better, I finished organizing my craft room last night. Dawn and I are now The Pirates Who Organize Everything, and for proof that I deserve to be part of this elitist group, I am posting, for your viewing pleasure, in-colour photographic evidence of my geekiness.

(The Pirates Who Organize Everything may be hired out for exorbitant fees that will simulate the feeling of getting plundered, for an authentic pirate-encounter experience. Cannon-ball holes in the living room wall are free of charge. Contact me at 1-800-RIPPED OFF for your personal consultation.)

Rubbermaid products are an essential part of any organization endeavour.

Also, labels. (They are all hiding on the ends of the containers. I haven't done up more for the sides, yet.)

My "Inspiration Bucket" and toolkit.

Look at all the pretty colours!

Close-up on geekiness.

Silk and Paper Flowers all in a row--you gotta have some Pretty in with the Practical, after all.

P.S. My "Craft Room" is a re-purposed wet bar in my basement. It works pretty well, actually! It's surprising how much stuff you can fit into a small space with enough shelves and plastic containers! :-)

How was your weekend, friends?

Friday Good Things

I love spring! Here are some other really great things about today:

• The sound of water dripping out of our blocked eaves-troughs--it means the snow is melting off the roof, landing in my front flower-beds, facing my almost-snowless front yard, and getting it ready for the sunflower seeds I am going to plant almost a month early this year! (If the winters be hard let the springs be early, I say.)
• The TULIPS that are poking up in said front flower-bed! YIPPEE!
• My husband's just-got-home kisses.
• Three little boys that were well-behaved all day during errands.
• Reading with my kids.
• Jabin picking out a library book completely unaided for the first time--and the fact that he picked I Want A Pirate Suit, and that he loves it so much already, is just perfect. (I think I secretly want to be a pirate. But a nice one--none of this raping and pillaging stuff. Do you think there is a market for nice pirates?)
• A craft room that is about half-way through the spring cleaning/reorganization process. I've been ignoring it all winter, piling scrapbooking stuff around my dining room table and tripping small children with it, because a) I was too busy to take the time to put things away properly in my craft room, so I would just throw things in there randomly, b) the mending projects were crowding out space for everything else, and c) it was too cold in that basement mid-winter to inspire me to freeze my knackers off to remedy the situation. Last night, I went and bought about 20 largish shoe-box-sized Rubbermaid containers, and the organization frenzy began, not abating until the wee hours. (There is something so therapeutic about uninterrupted organizing, I was hesitant to quit.) I shall be tackling the rest tonight.
• Movie night with my hubby tonight.
• The chocolate chip & banana cookies I shall be making shortly to be consumed during the movie. Mmm-mmm. Wanna come over?
• These amazing kids:

This is so great!

The video of this talented girl is only 2 1/2 minutes long. It could be your smile for the day! (Hopefully only one of many!)

Hey, Look! We got a family photo!

We were all sitting and even mostly looking in the same direction. Miracles do happen.

(Of course, I was wearing glasses because I couldn't wear my contacts before my eye appointment. Ironically, I shouldn't need to wear glasses for at least another decade, now, and this photo was only taken 10 days ago! Okay, I'll try to get off it, it's just so thrilling!)

Jude: 5 1/4
Noah: 4
Jabin: 2 1/4
Jason and Talena: Old enough for our kids to think we're ancient.