Tag Archives: soy

December 27, 2022 · 11:15

Foosball & image

Are you a mum who plays foosball with your son and it sets off your old carpal tunnel problem again?

No?

You’re lucky, I envy you!

I unfortunately I am such a mum!

I am sulking and I want to play foosball and I want to play it now!  Well, maybe not right now as it’s like 3:30am I am writing this and my son is in bed asleep… got to be reasonable don’t I?

Unfortunately the Christmas junk food has rattled my brain and I have no idea what to write for today’s post so I thought of the first thing that came into my head!

Now for the second thing that came into my head – this high protein diet is making my hair and nails grow faster than normal, in literally only six days my nails has grown as much as they would in three weeks!  It’s so weird… I am not used to it, I am literally scratching my body to pieces as I am not used to it and typing is becoming fun and slippy…

I have gone through bouts of growing my nails before in the past, but it takes weeks, shocked they are this long and it’s been days!

I hope I don’t have a bout of anxiety, or they will go… though I am biting less and less these days since I have discovered a healthy obsession for solitaire card games and practising tarot.

Henry wants me to start painting them as they are nice and long-ish for me, but I won’t because I don’t like it.  I prefer the French manicure look, personally, unfortunately I haven’t a clue whether those cuticles should be left alone or not.  I believe they should be, as it is painful to do what my mother always taught me to, pushing them back after a soak in the bath and my skin is so sensitive the skin often splits under the pressure!

I am happy to say that my hair growth is getting better again too, the alopecia is almost growing out, unfortunately it makes me look a bit untamed in one area, but there is no bald patch anymore or fuzz, in fact there is now four inches of growth there – but as the rest of my hair is past shoulder length, it is noticeable a little and can stick up like an aerial or something if I don’t wax it down.

Today I wanted to post a pic of myself on Instagram but I refrained because I forgot how swollen I am because I was gifted chocolate that contained soy as a Christmas present and that means I am a whole dress size bigger with the swelling it causes.  I am half thinking about either suffering it till it’s all gone as I love that chocolate, or just be grown up and give it to my son instead, so the swelling goes down again in three days?

My face swells making me look about fifty pounds heavier than I actually am whenever I eat soy or mustard, as well as my spleen and abdomen, it’s weird how it can happen in such a short space of time.  There are times I absent-mindedly eat soy and the effects work within ten minutes and by thirty minutes I have to change out of my clothes because it all cuts into me and sometimes actually makes me bleed if I ignore it too long!

It’s like I’ve turned into a hulk woman or something… only less green…. Though saying that, sometimes I physically become sick over it all!

I have strict and painful rules from January, if I know there is soy or mustard in something I am not going to have it anymore, not even as a one off and that’s going to be so hard for me!

I love Heinz salad cream, I love Dijon mustard with sausages, I love Chinese food, I love nutty chocolates like Peanut M+Ms and Ferrero Roche and Nutella, oh my goodness do I have an absolute passion for Nutella!

I want a food scientist to make Dijon mustard without mustard…

I want Nutella without soy and Heinz Salad cream without mustard but taste authentically the same!

I feel a near Verruca Salt type tantrum coming on in fact…

“Don’t care how, I want it now”!

Trying to remind myself it is probably healthier this way, but it’s no comfort!

My idea of comfort is eating roast potatoes with ham, boiled egg and cheddar cheese with a hugely packed salad and doused in a tablespoon of Heinz Salad Cream, that’s comfort. 

Or eating ham salad crusty rolls with the salad cream as a favorited lunch! 

Comfort is also crispy crepes covered in Nutella and turned into a wrap with more Nutella on the top and a sprinkling of sliced almonds, icing sugar snow and whipped cream on the side.

Or trying to catch peanut M+Ms with your mouth annoying anyone sitting near you with being pelleted by the failures!

I haven’t done that in years…

It is also fudge and donuts too… yes for some weird reason they have soy in them as well!

Did I mention the washing machine broke down a few days before Christmas?  We’re having to wash the clothes by hand like old Victorian washer women for about a month, as we can’t get one delivered until around the 17th January and that’s being bought on credit.

Such fun…

Paul confused me the other day, so I spent more than we could afford on non-credited gifts for Henry as he wasn’t clear, which made us slightly overdrawn – Paul doesn’t take responsibility for that, totally blames me, but he was the one who wasn’t clear.  He was the one that made it sound like two things were already paid but in fact it was only one!  Coincidentally this has meant that for two weeks I have no personal allowance, until the overdraft is paid back – which means my business plan on WordPress is delayed in the next payment and my gym membership has to be delayed by a month too.

Something similar happened once before a few years back, just as I planned to be constructive with our finances… my mother was the same, I am wondering if it’s not at all accidental if you get me?

That’s the thing with me, you talk in numbers I am easily muddled so you have to be clear with me, if you give me several numbers I get confused so it’s easy to mess with my head and make me feel like a fool and give me any old gibberish you like to be in the clear of any faults – it’s easy to take advantage of someone who isn’t very smart!

I think the delay is part of Paul being worried I am trying to knock weight off and find my inner vanity again, because I’d like to start dating around Easter time, maybe sooner if someone asks.  Because I was told that I could potentially achieve my weight loss goal a month earlier than I thought with gymophobics if I maintained my protein diet as well. 

I am joining the gym because I need support learning how to slim and tone down my upper arms because they are stubborn and I tend to bulk too much there, so I want to know what I am doing wrong!  I don’t want 15 inch biceps, you know? No matter how tones they are!  Well mine aren’t just saying…

I tried non weighted exercises at home with videos from YouTube, but still I am bulking – I don’t know what’s going on, but I hope I am not genetically made to look like a female boxer! To be honest, though I haven’t exercised since the end of the first week of December because of a chest infection, but I am getting better!

I already have what my grandmother referred to as hockey legs; don’t want boxer arms to go with that!

Though to be fair I’d rather be a muscular healthy woman than a big lardy one like I am now!

Because if I wear my scruffs, a thick woolly sweater and jeans and someone calls me fat in McDonalds I can do what I used to do in my early twenties, take the sweater off and fold it up looking at them in the eye, in my camisole and see them go white with how toned I am.  They soon apologise and try to explain themselves usually self detrimentally!

I used to do weight lifting in my early twenties – but as I said, I don’t want to be bulky now.  Back then I wanted to be like the pro-wrestler Chyna!  She was my pin up idol, amongst Diana Dors, Kathleen Turner, Glen Close and Reggie Bennett… in fact my body is a little like the latter at the moment lol!

Just a little less toned and my waist is actually narrower or as Paul would say, more defined!   

https://img.comc.com/i/Wrestling/1995/BBM-Pro-Wrestling—Base/158/Reggie-Bennett.jpg?id=1d6ae783-4344-4d36-a407-f3563edd3b9f&size=original

Seriously it’s just eight months of hard work that’s all I need for my idea of a perfect body!

Shame about my face and remember, the dentist hasn’t got back to me about those braces I wanted, because I have a tooth missing and there is a half gap, because it was a sticky out tooth that got damaged to its root.  The braces will just close the gap after six months and my teeth are pretty much ok then.

I need to professionally dye my hair too as I am going white lol, it’s a trait in my family; we tend to be pure white by fifty!

Or do I embrace the natural change and pretend to be natural platinum eventually?  Lol Because it really looks like I am going to be snow white all over, not the horrible grey some people go.

I used to have snow white platinum hair from baby to around six of seven years old, then for some reason I became brunette!

I was nicknamed The Angel of Burnt Oak and won local pageants and things.

I have a bit of a Barbiecore leaning, so perhaps I should wear it with pride?  Don’t know!

With what I regard my waist being my best feature as well as my eyes and lips, I think I could eventually tone myself to be a nice Barbie doll, alright forget the age thing… I am sure I could manage it… lol… I am going to try!

Stupid probably… but… I’ll try!

Probably over optimistic, but I won’t know unless I try!

I have green eyes which makes me more special than Barbie as they are rarer! 

So there!

Thanks for reading!

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December 22, 2022 · 00:10

Remission, weight loss and dreams

It may have been a long remission between Easter and last week, because for the past few days I have been sleeping a lot and finding things a little difficult again.

My immune system has taken a massive hit and I feel like I have influenza but there is no temperature and not much else of the normal flu like symptoms.  The brain fog is coming back, the depression is hitting hard again and then the washing machine breaks down two days ago and it needs replacing.

The asthma has got a bit worse too, but it’s the feeling that I am turning into stone or lead I can’t get over – every limb feels weighted. 

Very sleepy is not a good description really – I kind of feel like I am going into a hibernation period, if you get my drift?  But what is weird about that is the fact that I can’t seem to sleep at night.

My appetite has stayed much the same, not eating much at all, so the idea of gaining weight over Christmas is silly as I seem to be losing up to two pounds a week still or not moving on the scales at all.

I found a local gym for £8.75 a week membership, I can afford that with my personal allowance and I will be signing up for the membership around the end of January, to help me tone up – my upper arms in particular as they are the only things which don’t seem to be doing what the rest of my body is doing… losing inches and toning up.  They are a good gym to go to because they specialise in helping people who have long-term health problems or are morbidly obese, which I need because I have asthma and a couple of auto-immune problems, one of which is rheumatic arthritis.

It’s exciting to note that I have lost ninety six pounds over a year now without much effort, now let’s take it up a huge notch!  I am not that far off from my goal weight and with this gym membership I should reach my goal weight before July with any luck – at least I haven’t been on the morbidly obese scale for a while now- In fact I remember a time where I was a horrifying 56 on the BMI scale that was nearly two years ago!  No, this wasn’t the reason I was bedbound either, the bedbound came first and this kind of obesity was caused by that!

How did I manage that?

Simple!

I was a highly active person who walked an average of nine miles a day amongst lots of other exercises and physical activities, needing to eat an average of four thousand calories a day just to sustain myself or collapse – to becoming a severely ill and bedbound person literally overnight, but never readjusted my diet, until three years later when it dawned on me what the heck I was doing!

I had such spleen pain and constant chest infections for nearly eight years solid, the amount of times I was diagnosed with pneumonia too, I couldn’t move because the spleen was too swollen and I was literally advised to do nothing in case it ruptured!  NHS overstretched before covid even existed and so operating wasn’t an option given to me! 

Especially as I was eating my feelings when the depression stepped in, meaning I was over doing food on a massive scale for someone who was extremely sedentary!

It wasn’t until around three years ago that I realised when I am having an angry or a depressing day, I go to food again for comfort, I realised this is a base instinct we all have; why?  Because as animals we would take our anger and frustrations out on other animals and bite them and attack them, but as humans have learned to civilise ourselves somewhat we suppress our anger and food is the substitute for the primordial release for biting!

So when you feel depressed, sad or angry get yourself chewing gum – believe me, it works – only I find it hard to have gum these days because most of it contains soy and soy is really bad for my spleen issue.

Around four years ago was the time I had a completely free from diet, no eggs, no gluten, no lactose, no soy and a mostly paleo diet.  This helped a lot with the breathing problems and the swollen spleen, eventually I learned that I could eat almost anything without pain but there was something still off – occasionally my spleen would swell again and it took until earlier this year to find out what was doing it… mustard and soy. 

Now I am not on a free from diet anymore, but I have to avoid soy and mustard, or the spleen swells up again and my asthma has a bad day – unfortunately most of my favourite foods contain them, as I especially love mustard!  So suffering is a choice now – which I don’t choose often! 

Not a lot of people who are recently acquainted with me take me seriously about how much I understand nutrition and exercise since they’ve always known me to be this size.  But in actuality, I am really switched on, because I used to be very athletic and I can name in approximation the calorie worth and nutritional value of most foods.

But for some people they can’t understand that if you know all of this, then why did you allow yourself to get so fat?

Because if you live a certain lifestyle for too long, then you become ill where the physical aspect changes but not the food – you can see how this is easily done.  But people will be people and some people are morons and don’t use their head on this kind of stuff!

I remember a time where my doctor suggested my diet was too healthy, too low on salt, too low on fats and too low on calories, that I was blacking out three times a week on average and going into severe full bodied cramps.  Because of lack of electrolytes as I didn’t add salt to anything and I had a low fat diet which was mostly vegetable based.   I remember having to keep a food diary constantly and keep every nutrient in mind and I remember having to rush out to McDonalds at random times throughout the week to get the high fat, high salt and calorific food I needed because I didn’t have time or the wherewithal to eat a large meal, so I had to opt for big macs as a dietary supplement.  A weird contrast to my life now!

No, I do not miss it, because I didn’t enjoy having to do those things – what I do miss is the health and fitness I used to have and the energy I had as well as the body.

In the future, I am hoping to get all that back again, only this time I am going to be smarter, no big mac supplements anymore – I have a weight lifting professional friend who had the same problem, only she supplements the low salt problem not with crisps and salted fries or peanuts, like I did – but as adding rehydration salts to every bottle of water she drinks!

At the time I knew I was a protein type metabolism but I didn’t fully understand it as much as I do now and I never knew you could get really nice protein drinks to get what you need in per day.  I was literally trying to stuff down copious amounts of chicken and fish every day into my system – another thing which will change in the future.

You see, back in the good old days of when I was active, I was active alone and without a fitness network, so I was literally clueless and often had stomach ache and a bulimic reaction to the food I needed to eat.

You live, you learn.

Paul and I are still living together but we are separated, still he is trying to support me the best he can with the diet I need.  He has told me that our finances are better than we used to have as we are now being supplemented now he is retired, which means I can see the doctor more often and the diet can improve slightly.

In March my own personal finances will have doubled for me, which means I could also supplement myself too – so I should be losing the weight much faster soon.  I will get back on it all after Christmas, properly.  

Calorie, protein and nutritional monitoring that is, as well as signing up for the local gym classes!

My self-employment should be kicking off around March too, so hopefully I will earn enough to consider moving out of Paul’s by the end of summer, maybe – who know?  I can’t see me living alone to be honest, but there you go!

I don’t do New Years resolutions, so please don’t take all of this as that!

My second biggest dream right now is to rediscover my inner pride and vanity! 

When I was healthy and fit, there were a lot of people who said all I needed to do was dye my hair blond and get a Chihuahua and I’d be like Paris Hilton in my style!  I was offended, because what’s wrong with a brunette?  Though I like the idea of platinum hair! 

Though maybe they were just on about how much I love pink and fluffies? 

My first biggest ever dream I’ve had forever now, is to find someone who genuinely loves me and wants to keep me, build a family with me, push me to be the best that I can be and we motivate each other like live in life coaches!  Along with this the person has to tolerate that I can be suffocating with how I love them and hands on with them, because I am just like that!  I am like Elmira from Looney Tunes – but they also have to tolerate eccentricities, daydreams and creative pursuits as it’s all a huge part of who I am!  Please also, the person must understand I am very childish – I am overly playful and I am not too responsible really.  I am such a hedonist to be honest!

My third ever dream is not what you think it is either… nope… no, it’s not really anything to do with my stories or art – it’s having a great home and social life. 

The stories becoming movies is really a fourth dream… shock horror… I know!

I kind of kept that a secret as I kind of wore this with shame for a while – but I am starting to release the true me and I have to be honest with you as much as myself now, don’t I?

I feel bad admitting that actually.

I am still writing, don’t fret!  I am just not all that bothered in giving boring details about word count anymore, because nobody really cares enough to comment unless they are a troll who moans about how often I update word counts!

But meh – I always lacked structure anyway, I say I intend to write one novel but I end up writing a little towards twenty and so…. I am learning to become at peace with me and the way I am… so should you!

But project AD and the Easter project are the main focuses for me right now, even if I only write about twice a week on both of them – at least its progress!  You have to remember I have lots of other projects on the go too!

I know lots of people are eager to get their hands on project AD and this is why I am writing this as fast as I can, because I know there are a lot of people in waiting over it. 

I just got to get it out there anyway, because it’s a great story and I am very excited for it.  I am seeing merchandise in my head already; it will be a great new toy brand in my opinion as it is a dystopian comedy for kids.

But the Easter project is also gripping me a lot too with so many amazing ideas I am literally bursting to share them with someone but scared I’d shoot myself in the foot if I did!

So that’s what’s happening in my life right now.

Thanks for reading!

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November 15, 2022 · 16:55

Henry, dreams & things

Celebrating the fact that Henry has had two full days at school this week!

It’s becoming a rarity, but I hope it’s going to change a bit – Henry has come home a little bit anxious because a new supply teacher was rude and apparently mean to him and several other children; but Henry is a lot like his mum, in that sometimes in stressful situations we forget the words but remember the actions, if you get me?  So Henry can’t relay exactly what was said.

Thankfully nothing came of this meningitis presumption – I am so happy and relieved about that!

Henry is at his youth club tonight for three hours, so I have plenty of time to get to write something today, I am going to do it, though I had only three hours sleep last night and I have big dark circles around my eyes that make me look like I have been in a fist fight with a kangaroo!

I am having a lot of weird and heavy dreams at night in the past few weeks, even in short sleeping bursts like last night.

Two days ago I had a dream about three candles being lit that were a brownish colour, that had red and white wax melting inside of it, which was weird and on one of the three candles were two rings – like non gem wedding and eternity rings. 

There was a hooded red figure discussing what to do with the candles and they were slightly frustrated but still patient with me, because I kept moving the candles around and blowing the flames out and relighting etc. 

There were other people at the table, just one man and one other woman; they all had their own candles.  The man found me amusing somewhat and tried to advise me a little, but the woman looked at me in disdain and thought I was an idiot.

I remember taking the rings off one of the candles and I was told not to do that yet, be patient – so I put them back.

I was a little tensed and confused in the dream and felt like a naughty hyperactive child and ended up trying to sit on my hands or twiddle my thumbs whilst sitting there clueless about what’s happening – the other two, seemed to know what was what, but I didn’t.

I woke up and did a tarot and oracle reading about what the dream meant and like a fool I didn’t consider it had anything to do with a new relationship or marriage – but my cards dropped a marriage card, a ring card, a love card, as well as a diamond in my usual 3 card reading – these cards dropped on the 3 I had already chosen and I thought that this was weirdly significant and related to each other too spookily well.  The oracle cards I used have 200 cards and are the Tea Leaf fortune cards, so to get all the indicators for marriage or new relationship like that was just so random and weird to me!

The three cards I pulled out in the normal manner were the firecracker card, the handshake card and the broom card. 

The meaning of the above according to this oracle is;

Firecracker = Excitement

Handshake = A meeting with a stranger could be important.

Broom = New home, new attitude

The other fallen cards just speak for themselves, its weird how mindless I can be during dream time and interpreting things – I suppose it’s because it was a dark room lit by candlelight and the rings didn’t look like jewellery to me, they looked like metallic black, if you get my drift?  A little darker than hematite. 

Last night’s dream was weirder and extra spooky because of events that took place when I woke up.

I dreamt I was at a ballroom again, this is a common dream I have, it is in the same building and room where I have those sorts of dreams and it isn’t a real place I’ve ever been to or seen on TV.

Like usual in those dreams I seem to have a completely different family to my physical real family, they’ve been in and out of dreams for years – it’s almost like I slip into a parallel world when I sleep at night.

Anyway in that dream I was wearing a golden dress with a sun like piece of jewellery just above the navel, it was hooked onto the dress like a brooch. 

I was just standing around when a gentleman comes over – the usual dream guy in fact, though this time he is slightly different facially, not much, but slightly showing some facial hair like he is growing a beard and moustache but it’s the early stages.  He had red decoration on his chest and wore his black suit; though it was different it was far more formal than usual.

He took me to a balcony and we talked a bit, then he went to my dream parents and they exchanged to him some black scarf or wide set ribbons, unsure what they were really and they placed them upon a staff – I think it was a staff anyway.

Then he came to me and we spent time together and then the scarves were tied like bangles around my wrist, it wasn’t bondage.  But in the dream people who saw us when we went back into the ballroom started to become excited and throw confetti or something like that at us.

It felt very similar to a private 121 hand fasting experience, if you understand me?

A sort of mini pagan wedding that hadn’t been officiated properly yet – this was like the first stage, I understood in the dream.

As I am writing this there is a weird pressure on my third eye – very odd.

Anyway, when I woke up I found lots of small pieces of torn up paper around the bed and on the bed, like someone had thrown confetti on me in the night, in fact it’s why I woke up – I felt a piece hit me on the head, but no one in the house was a awake to have done it, I checked.

All I know is as I woke up, I heard a voice say – quick, she’s stirring!

I’m either losing my marbles or things are stranger than I thought about this world!

It’s weird because traditionally scarves and ribbons in weddings are usually red in certain cultures, but these were definitely black.  What is weird is the guy had something red on him, but not sure what.

This is one of the reasons I didn’t sleep well last night – because when I woke up and went to the bathroom the house started to wake up around twenty minutes later and I decided to stay awake until I got dozy and had a two hour nap in the late morning.

It’s really eating away at me all these strange things – but at least those last two dreams were more pleasant than other dreams I’ve had this past month.

I have had awful dreams before them – Warning content needed here…

There was a baby I found that looked weak and ill and I wrapped it up in a blanket to look after it, the baby spoke to me and told me how I could find his mother and so I took him to her and she was working at a food van.  When I passed the baby to her, she snapped at me and said, put him on the counter there, I will sort him out later.  When I put the baby onto the counter he turned into a huge burrito and the lady grabbed the burrito, cut it in half and offered it back to me, which I declined!

Another one was a true out and out nightmare, I was escaping from some sort of prison and I managed to get out with the help of the dream guy.  But he needed to act as decoy to get someone away from me, but unfortunately whilst he was away my mother crept up behind me and cut out of my kidneys and ate it raw in front of me. 

When I woke up my back hurt a lot.

Loads of other dreams similar to these, but there is a horrible dream that keeps repeating lately and that is my rabbit Ray, being turned out into the garden in a small tight hutch and it falls into a muddy pond drowning him or there is a flash flood that sweeps him away.

Don’t know why I am having a lot of disturbing dreams late; usually dream time is a sanctuary.

I am worried about my lack of sleep, my light sleeps when I do sleep and the fact that lately I am struggling to eat more than 900 calories a day.  I’ve had two days in the past two weeks where I ate around 1400 but it’s much less than that recently and consistently.

I am getting pain whenever I eat anything bigger than half a sandwich which makes me stop eating a full meal.  I don’t eat breakfast and rarely have lunch, I have one or two snacks in a day, with a quarter of a plate for dinner if it’s a good day.

Paul is more than a little worried about it.

Yesterday was a goodish day, I had a tuna bagel with mayonnaise and chives and I had a ham & cheese salad sandwich and a packet of crisps for the whole day.  Unfortunately that’s too much gluten for my body, so my abdomen is a little swollen today, but it’s not painful.

Sometimes my chest gets bad the next day after I have more than a little of gluten and sometimes depends on how much gluten I have, my abdomen will swell like I’m pregnant or something, weird. 

It’s much worse with soy and mustard, because with those two my spleen swells as well as my abdomen and there is intense pain!

Right so, an hour into writing this, I have warmed up enough to get back onto my project AD for the evening, I still have an hour and twenty minutes before they come home approximately.

Thanks for reading!

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April 29, 2022 · 18:50

Sickness and feng shui

Covid hit my Henry in the first week of April, then it hit me a few days later, because of this I have been functioning at zombie level, because not only did I have Covid at the time but I was recovering from a non-Covid chest infection and gastric flu – which coincidentally, happened again just a couple of days ago.  More gastric flu hit the house on Wednesday and apparently gastric flu is spiralling in and out of everybody’s lives a lot in the last few weeks or around here in any case.

Because of all of this, I haven’t written a word towards a novel since the 2nd February 2022, ironic considering this was going to be my hardest working year in writing and I wanted to start as I meant to go on for the year.

I am exhausted but recovering slowly, my asthma seems much worse these days and my bronchial tubes seem to be permanently filmy and half opened, along with this it is also a bad hay fever allergy year for me.

Just existing is difficult these days, but I am trying to push through and though I have never been a huge coffee drinker, Covid has made me become one of the worlds many addicts as it seems to be one of the main things which is helping me through it all!

I don’t know if it is my neurological problem or Covid which has made this happen, but recently I am struggling to walk in a stable manner and I am finding it hard to sit up from a laying down position.  My legs feel like they have weights on them, however the weird thing about it is, it is as though I am walking on air at the same time, or that the ground has become marshmallowy.

My appetite has decreased further, where a simple dish of a small salmon fillet and half of a small a jacket potato with nothing else, is a feast to me!  This has meant, finding highly nutritious and varied foods on a small scale has become hard to manage.  I literally need micro-meals, I don’t mean microwave meals either, I mean small meals, miniscule for an adult, perfect for a 5yr old and I need to eat at stupid times.  I now regularly have to have a small meal at 10:30 pm just to get enough calories and nutrition in the day, which doesn’t help the insomnia.

A positive thing though, is I have discovered I am not actually lactose intolerant at all – I have found I have issues with gluten and lactose purely because those foods contained soy, since eliminating soy completely from my diet, I am now able to eat gluten and lactose again and let me tell you, its pure joy!  Though being a Chinese food addict means I can’t indulge in that anymore unless it is homemade and without soy!

I found out because twice I accidentally consumed things containing milk and then expected a bad night of gastric like proportions, but no, nothing happened.  Then I had another food which had milk and soy and I reacted, Paul thought that maybe it’s because I ran out of enzymes, but then we noticed that my lactase pills were not working for certain food items.  So I began a soy elimination diet, as suggested by a friend.

So I had been spending £18 a month needlessly on lactase pills, because it wasn’t a lactose problem at all, it was a soy one!

Despite being ill a lot this year, there is a noticeable improvement in other areas of my health, since going back onto lactose and gluten.  My skin and hair have improved a lot and a couple of other personal issues.

Henry is currently sick with very bad gastric flu and his fever broke earlier today, he had a temperature for so long that the doctor had said that on Saturday, if there was no improvement, he would have had to of been admitted, so there is a lot of relief there that the fever has now broken!

Because of all these health issues and so on, I decided that I should reconsider the house in a feng shui style, I knew certain aspects about feng shui, but not a lot, and I realised that things were better in certain years when furniture was in different places and worse when it was moved in other places.  Considering this, I read some books about what I did right back then, but was doing wrong now.  I found that there is a lot of blockages in areas that was good, particularly the health – which explains why we’re sick potentially.  The health centre of our house was established around the time I started to get sick eight years ago as a laundry pile area – not good feng shui, also we have small mirrors which we glued around each other so our reflections are always fragmented and cut up into bits, again not good feng shui!

Also I noticed that I moved dragon ornaments away from the places that they would like to be according to feng shui, we did better financially when a dragon and a tortoise was in the south west corner of the living room, but things have changed since I put them both in the south area of our bedroom!  Effectively moving them from the transformation area to the career area – career wise things may have improved as we are developing good contacts, though have not dedicated ourselves fully into creating a career just yet – so we will not move them back to the transformation area, but instead, move a spare dragon from another area to the transformation area and then move the tortoise out of the bathroom, which is a bad area to keep it according to the practise, especially as the bathroom is half in the health area!  Because our health centre is split into two rooms, which is unusual and complicated in Feng shui terms!

I love Chinese culture a lot, I believe a lot in the Chinese astrology and I do not like western astrology, I believe Chinese astrology to be more accurate in my life.  So, the idea of throwing me into Feng shui as well, I think, is a good idea!

My grandmother always said there was Chinese in my family, but I found out that she was slightly wrong about the nationality; they were actually Vietnamese and Singaporean ancestors, which kind of explain my so-called throwback eyes as some people call them (I actually think it’s kind of rude, but there you go).

 I would love nothing better than to move the furniture around again, but at the moment the family is sick and the areas I want to move would cause bad things to happen moreso this year, because those areas are all the areas of this year’s sha chi, which means if you move those areas outside of good construction days (according to chinese astrology) you will activate the bad energy there and make things much worse.  So we can’t make improvements until the 9th of May or the 23rd and 24th of May, as per the household’s astrology signs.

I am a water dog, Henry is a metal tiger and Paul is a fire monkey!

Anyway, thank you for reading and maybe in the future there will be more about the feng shui as I learn more.

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April 3, 2022 · 18:00

Sunflower solution

Today Paul and I have thought about the sunflower oil and sunflower lecithin crisis that has hit the world, because last year was a very bad year in sunflower production due to climate and weather disturbances but now there is another factor that has affected sunflower oil production – the war on Ukraine; this war has contributed to the sunflower crisis because Ukraine produced 46% of the worlds sunflowers and safflowers.  This means that the sunflower oil crisis has certainly lengthened, but it also poses a threat to people who have food intolerances like me.

Without the use of sunflower lecithin in products they will now use soy or flax and I am sensitive to both of those things, which means it has affected me directly!  My diet is going to become further reduced as a result of it.

Paul and I are uncertain whether or not I will react to flax lecithin’s, because so far as we know, I am mostly affected if I eat whole flax seeds or linseeds, so whether or not I will be ok in other forms, time will tell!

We do know that I am no longer severely gluten and lactose intolerant, that it was products that contained soy, that didn’t make itself obvious until recently.

We know that gluten causes a slight rise in my blood pressure if I eat, say more than a sandwich worth of bread in a day of wheat, but that it does seem to be mostly a wheat rather than gluten problem potentially…

Lactose only really causes an issue with my digestive system if I eat too much fat in one day, but I can now drink a milkshake or have a chocolate bar with no ill effect, if I am easy on other fats throughout the day!

So this has helped improve my diet choices again and there is a noticeable increase in my health since going back to these foods.  But it is not anything to celebrate really, as the changes are still rather small, just a change in hair, nail and skin quality and deeper, longer sleep sessions.  I am more tired these days, but we’re not sure why.

Because of the sunflower crisis, I told Paul that when we get some money, it might be worth investing some of that money in sunflower farming?  But Paul feels that many other farmers are already on the ball with that and may neglect wheat farms to do so, meaning that he feels there could be a wheat shortage soon as people literally chase what they think is a golden opportunity.

I am not happy about doing wheat farming, I am not into grasses because of the lack of biodiversity and Paul failed to remember that my sunflower farm would not be a monoculture, because you can grow other things underneath the big blowsy heads of flowers!  Beans, tomatoes, sweetcorn and squash for example are excellent companion plants for this crop.

Because aphids are attracted to sunflowers on mass, ants will actually farm those aphids for their honeydew and therefore the crops underneath the sunflowers would not be affected by the aphids as much as they would have without them. 

Because ultimately any farming or self-sufficiency I do is 100% organic and polycultural.

Not only this but farming the sunflowers like this would also bring in the three sisters philosophy too, corn, squash and beans, corn in particular increase their yield when planted next to sunflowers it is just a matter of alternating plants, sunflower, with a block of corn, sunflower, block of corn, you get it?

So it would be a very productive system in my opinion, so I guess, in a manner, Paul gets his way when he suggests we really should consider a grain…

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