My First Ever Break-Fast

[ty] 31 Aug 07

Well I'm finally done with my zany lemonade/maple syrup fast. All told it lasted from Sunday afternoon to Thursday afternoon. 4 days of quasi fasting. Very interesting. My highlights:

1) For most of Monday I felt lightheaded and floaty like when opiate painkillers start to kick in.

2) Evenings were the hardest time. You get home from work, drop off your bag, lose the shoes, and...have a snack. Very difficult.

3) As time went on I certainly found that I desired food less. Breaking the habit of eating when you're hungry was easier than I thought it would be. I had lots of energy though, especially in the mornings.

4) Unintentionally I lost 8 lbs. From 178 to 170

5) I slept a lot. 9pm-6am for 3 days. Usually I'm 11pm-6am.

6) On Wednesday I tried to do a salt water flush where you drink a liter of very salty water very quickly which doesn't get absorbed by your GI (b/c of the salt). Nothing happened. My stomach happily shnorked up a liter of sea water in under 3 minutes. Hmm.

7) When I got home yesterday I made and ate 2 waffles at which point ALL the blood in my body rushed to my stomach and I almost passed out.

Other than that I seem to be fine. My muscles, especially my legs, have been very sore since tuesday which I'm thinking might be toxins flushing out. Next week I start pre-season conditioning for wrestling so food will be a necessary thing. I had some pasta for dinner last night and a banana/PB smoothie for breakfast this morning. Bean and mushroom soup is the plan for lunch today and by tomorrow I should be fine to go back to a normal diet. Although that pretty much is my normal diet.

So it was an interesting experiment. For my next trick I'm going to learn to walk on my hands.

Nubby Learns to Laugh

[jd] 27 August 2007

Before I post this video, no we don't have our baby naked all the time. He just happens to be very cute when naked, so we have a lot of naked pictures. Onto the goods... Cayden has been letting out the occasional short single laughs for the past couple months, but not any real strings of laughter. Over the past couple days we have been more successful at coaxing some out of him:

Master Cleansers of the Universe

[ty] 26 Aug o7

I'm about to embark on the controversial "Master Cleanse" diet. Now just so that there's no misunderstanding I'm 33 yrs old, 5'10" (1.7m), 175 lbs (80kg) and perfectly happy with my weight, body, and proportions. What I'm not happy with is the idea that the average American male is carrying around up to 30 lbs (15kg) of undigested food in his colon. That's really not ok.

The basic idea here is that you fast for 4-10 days drinking nothing but a home-made lemonade with syrup and pepper in it. The syrup provides you with enough calories to operate and the cayenne pepper is for flavor. After the first day or two what's already in your intestines clears out. After that the acidic lemonade loosens the accumulated "intestinal plaque" from your colon and, combined with a laxative tea and salt water flushes, you supposedly clear out toxins and junk from your body. That's the theory anyway. My personal Pharmacist/Yoghini (Kev G. for those of you in the know) has walked this path himself and recommended it to me.

Mind you I am certainly not of the opinion that I, currently, have that much undigested food hanging out in my viscera. Rather, I'm curious what I have inside me that could be cleaned out. I've been eating relatively well since marrying an intestinally challenged hippy-chick so I'm not on the McD's crew but I do live in America and I don't chew my food well. So hey, maybe I'll get back that toy car I swallowed last winter.

At any rate. I ate a PB sandwich with some hashbrowns for lunch today and nothing since. I've been mentally preparing myself for 2 weeks now and shopping around for organic lemons. Today I found them at a good price and I assumed it was a sign so I'm off and running.

In other news Jordanna found an awesome hat for nubby that I'm keeping him in till he's 15. I put up some more nubby pics on our website. Go here.

Nubby in his new Sassy-Hat

We went "Blacklighting" with our friends Ruben, Anna, and Jamie last night. Absolutely amazing. More pics of my burgeoning beetle collection coming soon.

Ok, the time has come to test Blogger's new video function.


Just a few of the beetles from last night.

Stumpy meet Nubby, Nubby meet Stumpy

[jd] 24 August 2007

One bizarre side effect of Toku's accident is that he is way more interested in Cayden now. I had both of them on my lap the other day and Toku kept reaching out to sniff Cayden. Cayden responded by whacking Toku on the top of the head and trying to pull off his ear. Happily Cayden's ability to clench and unclench his fist is sketchy at best, and he ended up making a vague scratching gesture on Toku's head. Toku didn't seem to mind this at all, which I find strange because he still has no skin on his head. I can only assume the scab is itchy and Cayden's ministrations felt good, because he kept purring the whole time. All in all Toku is healing faster than I would have thought possible. Six days post-surgery he is almost entirely off pain meds and trying to sneak out of the house already. He will get his stitches out next week, which means his cone can come off, which means he can clean his skanky butt, which will make everybody happy. We had a great understanding with Genghis. When ever he was hurt, the first thing he did when you pulled off hte cone was clean his butt. You had just enough time to wash the cone before he moved on to attacking stitches, and then you could slap it on and everybody would go about their day just a little bit less smelly. Toku, unfortunately, has not mastered this concept. We will keep you updated on his progress, but all in all we are as pleased as we can be with our three legged cat.

Our 3 Legged Cat

[Ty] 20 Aug '07

You may be saying to yourself "but you guys don't have a 3 legged cat." And up until Sat you would have been correct. No longer. This weekend our cat Tokugawa had his front right leg amputated.

It all began innocently enough Saturday morning when I saw Toku heading into the house and I stooped down to give him some love. As a trained biologist I quickly noticed that not only could I see his skull through the hole on his head but his front leg was dragging behind him in the dirt. Needless to say we were loaded into the car and headed for the vet in under 5 minutes.

Now I have seen more than my share of animal viscera and have personally skinned and stuffed a number of mammals. His wounds were clearly at least couple of hours old and possibly as many as 12 in addition to being the worst wounds I have ever seen on a still breathing animal. Now keep in mind that I found him trying to get into our backyard slider. We have a 5 foot fence that the cats have all learned to climb. Somehow he hauled his seriously busted ass home from wherever he got hurt and scaled our fence with only 3 legs. Instead of using the front door. Damn cat.

The vet was of the opinion that he had been mangled by a fan belt and I was inclined to agree with her that something mechanical got a fast unexpected hold of him. The wounds all had pretty clean edges and if a coyote had done that to him Toku certainly wouldn't have been able to escape.

At any rate she gave him a very positive prognosis for surgery and we decided to proceed with the insanely expensive operation, the alternative being putting our otherwise perfectly healthy three year old cat down.

Jordanna picked him up from the vet today and he's been drunkenly stumping after her all evening allowing himself to collapse at her feet in a furry medicated pile whenever she holds still for more than a few minutes.

Below are a few pictures of him today for the strong of constitution.

Delyaed Notice

[jd] 16 August 2007

Pics of July in Tucson are up at our website here. I need to reset the white balance on that camera, sorry about the bluish tint. I am sure I will get around to fixing it some time before Christmas.

Things That Scare Me

Bargain basement laser eye surgery

Big Ugly Grubs

[ty] 11 Aug '07

Today I was slaving away in my yard trying to undo some of the burrowing damage my idiot dog has done. As I was moving a couple of flagstones I noticed what appeared to be a couple of very large larvae. Turns out thats exactly what they were. Grubs. Big, ugly, grubs. With some pretty gnarly pincers.

If you reckon you're made of pretty sturdy stuff there's a video of their leader trying to attack me here.

In other news I started school Thursday. So far so good. Kids are fun. Am I ready for the school year you ask? I think this speaks for itself...


And of course the latest update on Nubby.

Nubby is very very cute, no?

And here are two more movies of him working his new Jumperoo.
Jumperoo 1
Jumperoo 2

Dirty Dirty Coffee Monkey

[jd] 9 August 2007

I know the school year has started because Ty kissed me on the cheek this morning while I was sleeping and said, "Have a good day. I took all the coffee". Um, oxymoron?

In other news, Cayden started daycare and then went 6 days without pooping. When he finally exploded, it was at daycare. Good boy!

Feel Good Movie of the Year

[jd] 2 August 2007

Apocolypto certainly doesn't earn that award. I am steadfastly ignoring this masterpiece of Mel Gibson's as I type. I think that man needs therapy to work some stuff out. I think I might too at the end of this movie.

Update: I am waiting out this movie in the guest room (we are at JP's). It was threatening to bring on another panic attack. Happily I have been doing better the past two weeks. I have been going to a postpartum depression support group which has been really interesting. It is a bit intimidating, because the majority of women there are taking meds and some have been there for over two years. I am not anti-med, I just have always been anti-med for me (although this experience has definitely been mind opening). And, the idea of feeling this way in two years is intimidating. But, I have had many neutral days the past couple weeks and a couple downright cheerful days. Not so bad all told. In general I am feeling very hopeful about all of this. Going to the group does help, the women that go are really sweet and there is something cathartic about sharing experiences.

Anyway, several people have called to see how I am doing so I thought I would post an update. One thing I am incredibly grateful for is that none of my negative feelings are directed towards Cayden. I know that happens to some women, and I think that would make it even harder to deal with. Happily snuggling Cayden almost always makes me feel better.