It's Still Me!

Just greetings from a different place...

Greetings from Substack! My newsletter will be arriving via Substack for the forceable future. I am still trying to figure out how to transfer all my old newsletters here from GetRevue, but am having a Dickens of a time with it. I follow the directions, the program starts to run, and then a window pops up informing me that there has been a mistake. It, unfortunately, does not indicate what mistake has been made, which I think would be helpful. Lucky for me, my husband is a software developer, and he’s going to take a look at it. He’s my hero.

What’s on the agenda?

I’m glad you asked. I’m still recovering from the holidays and so I feel a bit like I’m sort of wandering about aimlessly, doing various home organization projects, but a little adrift with writing. (This newsletter keeps me writing something at least once a week!)

The first thing on the agenda is to try to establish a regular writing schedule. This is as simple as deciding what hour of the day I’m going to sit at my computer, no matter if the house is going to rack and ruin or not, and write for that period of time. Here is me being accountable to you all. I resolve to decide that hour before next newsletter. Hold me to it!

Second thing on my agenda which has nothing at all to do with writing, is to get my hair cut in an old-fashioned style so I can do pin curls a bit easier. I used to pore over old family photos and admire the femininity of the 1940s-50s ladies clothes and hair styles. I began experimenting with pin curls almost a decade ago, and now I’m ready to get the definitive middy hair cut of that time so that putting the pin curls in and the whole brush out process is faster and easier for me. I’m currently on the hunt for a salon that would do this specific cut, and I now have a lead. Stay tuned!

Third thing on my agenda is to organize one room of the house until every thing has its place and every place has its thing. Moving is a big pain. I think my last newsletter illustrated that pretty well. Though we are moved and “settled,” there are still piles of stuff and cupboards I’m a little scared of opening around here. So, I’m going to tame this house from the laundry room to the attic!

Fourth thing on my agenda is to read Sally K Norton’s book, Toxic Superfoods, and write a book review for you here. You may recall me discussing the topic of oxalates a couple months back. Well, Sally Norton is one of the more well-known voices on the oxalate issue. She has been working on a book for a long time, doing meticulous research on the oxalate content in foods. This is big because the food lists are rife with inaccuracies. I am trying to continuously reduce the amount of oxalate in my diet without doing it too fast and landing me back in bed or worse. (Feeling rather yuck just now, in fact.) But this is hard when the information is difficult to come by. The Trying Low Ox people on Facebook are lovely, but their page is overly complicated and difficult to navigate. Facebook just isn’t the medium for this kind of thing. That’s my opinion, anyway. In short, her book is now in print, I’ve ordered it, and can’t wait for it to arrive so I can read it.

Fifth thing on my agenda is to take another look at my dogs’ food. Now that my eyes have been opened to the oxalate issue, I am painfully aware that the extremely high-quality food I feed my dogs also contains excessive amounts of oxalates in the form of white potatoes, celery, and bananas. Both Bob and Argos have nagging health issues which I’ve been trying to help them with. Most alarming, Argos had an abnormal creatinine level in his routine bloodwork last yearly check up. This has been bothering me for months. Oxalates are really hard on kidneys and he’s only five years old. I do not want to lose my big sweet lug to something completely preventable. So, a food revamp is a must. I know raw carnivore feeding brings out all kinds of opinions in people, but I’m looking into it. And if I can do it somewhat economically, I’m going to.

The above photo is purely for fun. I think when my hair is parted down the center and hanging, wild, wooly and free, I look like a flower child of my parents’ youth. I’m thinking that before I cut my hair, I’m going to put on a bridesmaid’s dress from my mom and dad’s wedding (my Aunt Marilyn gave me one of them. I think it was the dress she wore) and do a photo shoot. Sounds fun! I’ll have to grab a straw hat and a bouquet of daisies since that’s what my mom had on her wedding day.

Well, that’s all for now. Until next time, folks…

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