Coke. It's the real thing - real dangerous!

Here is a fascinating article that I got off from Dr Mercola's site yesterday, about the habit of drinking coke. You may want to sit down with a cold glass of.....water!

Do you want to be healthy? Drinking soda is bad for your health in so many ways; science can’t even state all the consequences. Here’s what happens in your body when you assault it with a Coke:

Within the first 10 minutes, 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. This is 100 percent of your recommended daily intake, and the only reason you don’t vomit as a result of the overwhelming sweetness is because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor.

Within 20 minutes, your blood sugar spikes, and your liver responds to the resulting insulin burst by turning massive amounts of sugar into fat.

Within 40 minutes, caffeine absorption is complete; your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, and your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream.

Around 45 minutes, your body increases dopamine production, which stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain – a physically identical response to that of heroin, by the way.

After 60 minutes, you’ll start to have a sugar crash.

Sources:
Nutrition Research Center October 24, 2007

Go READ your vegetables!

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Inspire, don't require?" So have I. In fact, I have have used it and I even believe in it. Inspiring your kids to great activities and great reading is imperative to their success in their home education if you want them to continue to love learning all their lives.

However, sometimes, just sometimes, they need a little kick start. Occasionally they get in a rut (as we all do) and waiting for inspiration seems like a long winded ordeal. At these times I tend to lean a little heavier on require than inspire in order to get things moving again. It is a balance of both with sparing use of "require" from time to time.

We all know that some foods have an acquired taste and so it is with reading. Shakespeare may not appeal at first taste. Neither can some historical novels or great biographies. However the importance of them can not be understated. The vibrant energy that we get from truly inspirational lives put in print is worth every effort to get them to taste and see.

Furthermore, learning to love harder material is a stepping stone that we do want our children to eventually embrace. I refer to a step up in reading challenge or a gentle reading requirement as READING your vegetables. It takes work to digest vegetables and they are an acquired taste for many but the health benefits are far reaching. Vibrant education, articulate vocabulary and a solid Christian worldview are a few of the many benefits of healthy vegetable reading.

Conversely, a diet of junk food reading - comic books and some serial novels can dumb down and allow the reading palate to become dull. True, a little may not hurt you in the long run but a steady diet can make your heart sick and the desire for some time meatier tastes unpalatable.

So it is a wise mom who keeps a watchful eye over the reading choices of her children, and requires them to read a full balanced diet of science, history, biography and great literature. For a list of great meat and potatoes reading watch for future posts on the best of the best solid fiber and nutritional reading.

Real Life Learning-I wouldn't have it any other way!

One of the many benefits of having your children at home with you every day, is that they get to experience with you the daily events that make life real. If they were in a classroom all day their experiences would be contrived and scheduled and then graded. Many come out of 12 years of this assembly line eduction with just that, prestamped sameness, cookie cutter predictability and standardized test results.

Real life happens at our house. Sometimes it is the anticipation and preparation of the arrival of a special grandparent. Sometimes it is pulling over to the side of the road to fix a flat tire or handle another car problem. And sometimes our busy days stop completely in order to deal with a very painful event.

We buried our sweet little dog in the back yard yesterday. She had many problems and she was getting old. At 15 she had daily "accidents" and her little heart was so weak the blood was not getting to her lungs so she coughed a lot, gasping for breath. She had several tumors and sometimes bled from the rear area. The decision had to be made but it was just so hard to make it.

Yesterday had to be the day and I announced it to my teenage boys, "Go dig a hole." They knew what I meant. The tears flowed (mostly me) and I couldn't stop for a couple of hours. It was a painful day, getting those few preparations done. We ran a few errands on the way hoping to suspend the decision, I think. Last on the list was the Vet's office. We pulled in. I gathered myself together and approached the desk.

"Can I help you?"
"Yes," I squeaked. "We are here to have our dog euthanized."

What a cold word.

I did not make it past much more than that, searching the form I was to fill out through the tears pouring on the paper and smudging the ink. My boys were beside me with their arms around my shoulder, comforting ME! We must have been a sight! The lady in the back finally came to gently take her away and we said our brief goodbye's. They were kind and compassionate and I appreciated that. We were instructed to wait around the side door and we stood in the cold in muted silence fighting tears and wondering when it would be over. They finally came out with a box and her favorite down blanket covering her. She always liked to be covered up. The tears flowed again and we drove home and buried her beside the shed.

We were together the whole day through the pain, tears and the sadness and I would not have had it any other way. My two son's gentleness and tenderness was not only a support for me but they handled their grief in a manly dignified manner, important for them as well. It had to be done; they knew that, and we went through it together. We will have a few days of quiet I know, because grief must have it's time.

All of these real life events make up who our children are and will be in their future. Let's not ever separate our children from real life, in whatever form it may take-for the benefit of all of us.

Beanie, (Beanie Baby) January 26th, 1994 - January 8th, 2008
We miss you, Beanie

Another Day, Another Dollar....SAVED!

With even more purchases of energy savings light bulbs and another day on the ladder and we expect to wrack up additional savings on our power bill thanks to a great sale on compact fluorescent light bulbs.

We have a big house, probably too big for just the four of us at home now and so the power it takes to run this baby is steep. When my husband came home with his arms loaded with .....lightbulbs I thought he'd blown a fuse! But as he mentally calculated the difference it could make in our power bill, sparks ignited more potential savings in my imagination. This is how we worked it out.

We took out 5000 watts of potential power usage (66 light bulbs!) and replaced them with approximately 1000 wattage of potential use. That gave us a 4000 watt "savings," an 80% difference on the light bill! He estimated approximately 4 hours per day useage on every bulb in the house (which might be rather high)times 8 cents per KW charged with our power company = 1.28 per day X 365 days equals a savings of $467.00 per year. Minus the $50.00 invested in the bulbs yields an approximate savings of over $400.00 per year providing the bulbs last as long as a year. (They are advertized to last 7 years) That's over 1.00 per day, hence another day and other dollar - saved.....and we all know that a dollar saved is a dollar earned.
Any which way you look at it, I'm having a blast. Just call me the Merry Misery Mom. I'm in my glee.

I'm so excited!

I love saving money! I get chills up my spine, shaky knees and yet feel empowered all at once. My husband came home from Costco today with a big box of ....light bulbs!
"Guess how much they were?"
I shuttered. I just happened to pay a whoppin' $7.00 for ONE of these very looking bulbs at Winco (my cheap store) and do so every time one of our 13 spotlights blow out.
"Well..guess", he insisted.
"Umm , $5.00 each?" I hoped.
"Nope, $4.00 for a package of 6!"
"No way," I exclaimed.
"Yup, they are not your normal bulbs, they are compact fluorescent bulbs using 75% less energy." Working out the wattage and voltage usage my electrician husband estimated a savings of $300-400 per year!"

He quickly installed them all. They do not come on instantly though and in fact when we first tried them we were a little surprised at the slowness to become fully bright. Once they warmed up, (5-15 sec? or so) they seemed as bright as what we have had before,...no brighter! Yeah, I can compromise....open my eyes a little wider for that kind of savings. As long as the expected life span is as good as it says on the box we'll be set.

I am going to be checking our power bill and maybe charting it compared to last year this time to see if it makes a difference. I hope to shed some light on other ways we have learned to save money as well over the next few weeks. I'll keep you "posted!"

I Love January!

For a compulsive organizer, taking down the tree, packing up decorations, and vacuuming up the last of the Holiday cheer spurs a flurry of uncontrollable Spring cleaning. I know it isn't Spring yet but January is an excellent time to purge and replenish.

Have you ever noticed "white" sales are always in January? Furniture stores usually boast large sales numbers in January as well. I think it is more common that I thought. The urge to clean up and clean out comes naturally in the dark inside days of January. Furthermore, this is still our school break and I so rarely have start and "finish the job" time to spare so I am on a rampage, every closet, every drawer, everything in sight must have an excuse for being there. I become merciless in tossing, donating and reorganizing. And I'm in my glee. You see for compulsive organizers such as myself, this is the most delightful time of the year. I rethink systems, work on economizing products that we use, and restore order and fresh air in closets, etc. Some of the most inspiring books on cleaning and dejunking I have read are two books by Don Aslett:

Is There Life After Housework?
Clutter's Last Stand

Even though I read them years ago I still use many of the systems that I put in place almost 10 years ago. I still have spray bottles with dilutable cleaning solutions in every room for specific tasks. Bathroom cleaning takes only 3 and a half minutes when done daily. I can wash all the windows of my house, sparkling clean, inside and out in about two hours. (This is the only exception, I do NOT clean windows-in Seattle-in January. I let the rain do that.)

By the time Spring really does come I can be outside planting and preparing for a great summer show of blooms and tomatoes.

Being proactive throughout the year really does mean you can be on top of events and unexpected happenings as they come up instead of drowning in mess and dysfunction.

So, let's see, Kitchen drawers-done, laundry room-done, office and downstairs bathroom-done. Now, onto the school room. Hmm, I wonder if library late fees are tax deductible?

Purposeful Persimmons

I came across a winter salad recipe calling for persimmons. Quite honestly, I stumbled a little and thought, "What's a persimmon?" I had heard of them but had never bought or tasted one. I do not even know if I would recognise them at the grocery store, so to save face I did the only thing any honest homemaker would do. I sent my husband! With a cool and collected look on my face just as he was walking out the door I asked him to pick up a couple of persimmons at the grocery store. His reaction was worse than mine! "Persmidons? What's that?" I rolled my eyes and spelled them for him and told him to ask someone in the store or read the signs, "I want two, please," silently chuckling as I closed the door. I was astonished at the price of 2.00 for two tiny plum sized orangeish fruit but simply followed the directions and peeled them and chopped them for our evening meal.

Wow, I am sold! Persimmons are mine, to love and to hoard. They made a delightful color splash in our green salad and since then have tried them to my delight in a smoothie. Yum. AND, they are grown in the USA making them on my OK to buy list (No US banned pesticides.)
They are somewhat high in carbs and natural sugars but topping a salad makes for a moist sweet flavor boost amongst flat lettuce leaves. They are high in natural iron and vitamin c making them a great winter addition to our diets.

Persimmons are delicious whether eaten fresh, dried, or cooked. As a fresh fruit, they are unbelievable, perhaps the cross between a crunchy peach, and an sweet apple. However you might describe them, the taste of a fully ripened persimmon is superb-incomparable to any other fruit. (Persimmons are featured in the soon to be released book, "101 Foods that could Save your Life,")

Today, I found them at my local Winco grocery store chain (standing for Washington, Idaho, Nebrasca and Colorado,) for only 28 cents each! I filled my plastic bag with visions of what else I can try?
Hmmm,....How about homemade persimmon ice cream? I'll let you know how that turns out.