This week I decided to simply share this video I made about wearing masks.
I'd love to hear your feedback.
I had a major craving for peanut butter cookies last week and the craving did not go away so I, of course, made a batch this weekend. The process starts with pulling out my recipe. Wait, what? MY recipe. Why do I call it my recipe? It’s not actually mine, I didn’t come up with it. I simply follow the directions. Well, I pretty much follow the directions. There might be a couple of tweaks… like adding chocolate chips or using half whole wheat flour instead of only white flour. I also may have used only baking soda and not baking powder. Sometimes I use almond butter or cashew butter instead of peanut butter; but not if my oldest daughter or son is around because they are allergic to almonds and cashews but not peanuts (I have to keep in mind who is in the house). I also sometimes use some honey instead of sugar. So, I guess it has kind of become my recipe. With some simple changes and alterations, I turn the recipe into something that suits me and my family.
That got me thinking about my stories. I might tell a fairytale from a book, but I never tell it exactly like it is written. With some changes of words, some tweaking of characters, and a bit of magic (just go with me here) I make changes that make the story mine. Other storytellers may use the same book and story but they will make their own changes so the story belongs to them as well.
When I get in front of the audience, I still may have to make some quick changes to suit the audience that is in the house. I could tell the same story to adults as well as elementary children but I would need to change vocabulary, maybe even the length, and I may have to leave some things out.
There are a lot of peanut butter cookie recipes and each one will be a bit different depending on the recipe and who is making them. There are also a lot of fairytales but each one will be a bit different depending on the story and who is telling them.
There’s that craving again… time for some tea, a peanut butter cookie, and a book of fairytales.
This week I give you this video from TEDtalks.
For all of the misfits out there: those who are odd-shaped pegs expected to conform to a round hole. You may not have had the same experiences as Lydia, but we have certainly had the same feelings and emotions.
At the beginning of 2020 I went for my yearly physical and told my doctor, “I know I need to take off a few pounds but I don’t want to focus on that. I want to focus on being healthy and strong.”
She said that sounded like a good plan and referred me to a facility. “Several of my patients have had good results working with them,” she said.
I have been working with a nutritionist there since the beginning of the year and I’ve had very little weight loss (remember, that’s not my focus this year), but I have had some great improvements. I’ll blog for about that at another time.
My nutritionist introduced me to kombucha, a fermented tea that contains a “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY).” It’s the good bacteria you need in your gut. Our American diets are not all that friendly toward our guts, and medication affects that, too. I’d been drinking it for a couple of weeks and doing my best to find it on sale whenever I could since it is a bit pricy (about $3.00 a bottle) but I was feeling the benefits from drinking it so I wanted to continue drinking it each day.
Because I wanted to cut the cost of adding this healthy beverage to my diet, I looked into making it myself. I told my dietitian about my interest and to my surprise, she said, “I brew my own and if you want to try it, I’ll give you a starter SCOBY.” I was rather excited about that. I went home and found a jar to get my Kombucha started in. I also began saving my drinking bottles from the readymade Kombucha I had been purchasing from the store.
After I was given the SCOBY and I gently put it in its new home. (The SCOBY is kind of creepy looking). I brewed the tea, added the sugar, and followed all of the other directions and got it going, sending pictures to my Nutritionist along the way to make sure it was looking and doing what it was supposed to do. So far, so good. I haven’t been able to taste it yet (it is not ready yet) but it has been brewing for 2 weeks now and I am getting excited to give it a try. I’ll continue this story in a later blog when my Kombucha has reached ‘perfection’ and I no longer need to spend $3.00 a day on a bottle from the grocery store.
For now, here are some pictures I have taken of my first Kombucha brew. For sure, there will be more later on.
My family and my friends are:
Republican, Democrat, and Independent
Fat and Thin
Straight and Gay,
White, Black, Brown, and Olive
Funny and Serious
Female, Male, and Trans
Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Pagan, Universalist, and everything else between
Country and City
Young and Old
Short and Tall
Introverts and Extroverts
From North America, South America, Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe
I love you all and to the best of my ability —
I’ve got your back … and your neck.