Podcasts and Annie's lipid profile

Annie wants to know why I didn't publish her numbers. I say "did you forget how to post, dear?" But, the real reason is that her numbers are always good, whether she's eating poke salad or pork chops.

Total:   139
HDL:     73
LDL:      56
tri:         48

However, I won the glucose wars this time! Annie's:  98    Ho hum, she replies.

If you think there's no genetic component to cholesterol and lipoprotein levels, we're here to disagree unpleasantly and argue loudly. Annie and I eat the same foods, and have the same levels of exercise. As the clinician told us, life ain't fair!

Penny Lane asked me if we would consider doing a podcast like other RVers, where we talk for an hour about some aspect of our fulltime RV life. I thought we could, but then I realized Talk for an hour? How is that possible?

A: Well, Roxi, it's that time again.

R: What time is that, Annie?

A: Roxi, it's time to talk about stuff for an hour.

R: Annie, what is our topic this week?

A: Roxi, this was your week to decide.

R: We're fulltiming boondockers (Time?)

A: That's 20 seconds.

R: (sigh) Boondocking is camping without hookups. We do that all the time. (Time?)

A: Roxi, that's 23 seconds.

R: Tell them about that time.

A: Ha! Ha! That was funny.


Seriously, do you know how many interesting blogs you could read in an hour? A lot. Do you guys listen to RVing podcasts?

Vegan motivation

Don't think of it as harping. Think of it as heavy-duty sharing.

We watched a fun video last night, and it wasn't even "fun" with quotation marks. Dr. Michael Greger runs down the top 15 causes of death in the U.S.; he runs them down with plants and current research.

Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

He's funny and interesting, and he makes the science accessible. I can muck my way through a paper, but it takes it out of me.

He says things that you won't hear a lot of doctors saying, like (spoiler alert) prescription drug side-effects - not misuse, just side-effects - are the 6th-leading cause of death in the United States. Filling a prescription and taking it exactly the way we're directed. If our lunch can keep us from needing prescriptions, why not eat it?

Can we just exercise more and eat what we want? Watch and find out.

What happens immediately after we eat an animal-based meal? Watch and find out.

I got the link from the Happy Healthy Long Life lady. She's another good and accessible source of food research.

  If you're leaning toward trying a plant-based (vegan) diet, give it a look. It's more fun than that re-run you were about to suffer through.

If you're already vegan, but sometimes feel like a soymon swimming upstream, definitely watch this.
Sandie raises a point worth amplifying. Is there any point to eating fewer animal products? Of course! This fellow makes a great case for losing one meat-based meal a week. USDA, bite my tail feathers.

I'm guest-vegan blogging!

Guess who's the guest blogger over at Vegan Vagabonds? Take all the guesses you want until you figure out it's ME!

I used up all of today's words over there. Go look at them.

How versatile was she? A joke not to tell your Nana.

I want to thank my mom, and my second-grade teacher, Wanda Justice, and my best friend Debby, and my other best friend Alicia. I couldn't have done it without my mentors, Donald and Daffy, and that catty witch, Daisy. And, especially Betty from Phoenix Once Again, who gave me this award. I thank you all.

Random things about me:

• I can't whistle.
• I don't play the piano.
• I have never met Lady Gaga.
• I have removed wallpaper.
• I've never waited tables.
• I've ridden in a helicopter.
• I'm afraid of heights.

It would be easy to come up with five versatile bloggers, so I'm not going to. Instead, I'm going to tell you about a few bloggers you may not follow yet, but should.

1. Chinle from Spotted Dog Ranch. She can weave a tale, fiction or non-. She has written a couple of books, and from the excerpts she publishes on her blog, they're well worth a read.
2. John from Going Gently. He writes about life with his partner in a tiny Welsh village in a way that makes you want to chuck your big city and your overpowering sunshine and join them.
3. Old Jules from So Far From Heaven. Despite your best intentions, his gentle, funny stories will make you think. Read with caution.

I'm not going to officially give them my award. But, go take a look as though I had.

(No-)Food update, Day 5:

$61 today for produce. Annie says she feels weak, and we decide to eat more. She has a spoonful of peanut butter. We're both headache-free today. I notice that I don't feel stiff when I get up in the morning.

We continue to eat vegetables and fruits, as well as drink them. Annie made a cabbage and potato soup, as inspired by Lori's.

We've been reading a little bit from Joel Fuhrman's website, Disease Proof. He encourages nuts and seeds more than Dr. Esselstyn does (not at all). If we believe Fuhrman instead of Esselstyn, that will make life easier. Okay guys, which of you is more correct? 'Fess up. I'm hungry.

We're strategizing about what comes next, after the Reboot. We think we will mostly eliminate meat-substitutes. We may add back a little fat and see how that goes. It's tough to get enough Ω-3s to balance out Ω-6's without seriously cutting back on the 6, so I'm wary. Omega-6 is everywhere! Omega-3 is not. That's part of the nut dilemma, because every nut is a step backwards in a healthy 6:3. All nuts are heavily weighted in favor of omega-6. Even the best one, the walnut, is 4:1 in favor of 6. [That sentence is gibberish. Hand me a napkin.]

My friend, Joan, from Ithaca, sent me this article about coffee. If you have no intention of changing your coffee habits, for goodness sake, don't read this. It will just make you mad, and I'm too frail and thin to argue. 

Overall, I feel good. Annie says she's not bad - no headache. Her knees are a little achy, but her hip is better. Our heads feel clear. My blood pressure remains on the high side, as always.

If you didn't enter my first-ever giveaway, go over here and do it. If you want the prize. Or, maybe you're one of those people who enters giveaways so someone else doesn't get it. That's cool, go ahead.

Edit: if you're thinking that a low-fat, vegan diet would be spartan, check out Happy Healthy Long Life's blog. 

It FELT like an emergency.

We visited the "Farmer's" Market in Munds Park. There was nothing farmy here, but I took this picture for Leslie and Gary, who want to operate a traveling coffee shop while they full-time. I wanted to drink a venti mocha choco latte yaya. I wanted to lick the truck where the coffee smells were coming out.


I have not had coffee in 56 hours.

We live here right now.

Make a wish and blow.

Your caption goes here.

 I thought I would be wiped out today, but instead I walked a couple of miles. A nearby road leads to a funny little neighborhood...almost. It actually leads to someone's backyard. I know now how to get to a road. It's a well-beaten path, and then you can see where people go wha...where's the trail...I'll just turn around because it gradually turns into a not-so-well-beaten path.

Late afternoon

 

Reboot update:

We are not especially hungry. 

We didn't nap today.

We spent $38 on produce to replenish leafy things.

Besides feeling a little sleepy, I would say I'm feeling better. I haven't woken up with a headache the last two mornings, and I don't feel sluggish.

Annie says she would feel great if it weren't for her incessant throbbing headache. It is probably a migraine, but isn't responding to her meds. Let's not rush to judgement yet; it's only been 48 hours for the reboot, but I'd be happier if she weren't in, you know, agony. It could be caffeine withdrawal, too.

We're both peeing a lot, ergo, vegetables contain urine.

Bait and switch

Poop from elk and poop from cows 
Live together in peace - I don't know hows! 
Side-by-side underneath the pine trees, oh geez! Why can't we?
[Ebony and Ivory]

I started with poop, McCartney and Jackson, because if I told you I was going to talk about our green juice fast...well, how fast can a surfer click? Move your cursor away from the hyperlink. It's going to be fun. You'll love it. It might even get back to poop, who knows?

I blame Tessa, Evelyn, and Lynne. The gurus of good eating. The trio of try it! you'll like it! The Vegan Vagabonds. They linked to Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, and who can resist a good love story? By the way, that link takes you to Hulu where you can watch for free.

We're easily the most suggestible people living in a pine forest, so we made a plan to do it. Here we are, doing it. A vegetable/fruit juice "reboot."

   

We've been at it about 24 hours now, so here's our accumulated wisdom. Think of it as Alexandria before the fire:

1. a little beet goes a long way
2. cherry tomatoes are the garden's Houdini
3. broccoli is more easy-going than you'd expect

The movie predicted that a conventional juice diet (that is, made from conventionally-grown produce) would cost ~$14/person/day, and organically-grown, double that. That seems high, but reboots don't come cheap.

Our first batch of produce = $53, a mixture of organic and conventional. It looks like we'll come in way under the projected cost for this purchase, since we'll still be working on this produce tomorrow, but it also turns out we can't drink as much juice as those guys did, either. 

Half the smoothie

     

The other half

The juicy experts suggest we put the caffeine away, which explains today's 2.5 hour nap. Look how much cats sleep! It's because they don't drink coffee.

I'm not doing a daily progress report, because that implies I will talk about juice every day for ten days. It can't happen. There won't be enough waking hours to blog.

We were talking about this project with my cousin, Lori, and I reminisced about how we did juice fasts when I lived with her.  

... you lived with us??

Yeah! For three months! You don't remember?

... you lived with us??

Right! It was 1979. You were vegetarian then.

... you lived with us??

Definitely! Jen was three, and Jon was a baby.

I remember I cleaned the whole apartment, and then a roach strolled out of the closet.

No, that was me.

And then she lent us her juicer.

This is all mostly an experiment, with the guidelines being 80% vegetables (mostly leafy)/20% fruits. After the initial juice batch (we call it the "beet batch"), we got comments:

• "not horrible!"
• "I don't want to vomit!"

What we've read indicates it gets even better than that, and so it did.

Fighting back gently.

Our sponsor, BlogHer (which you may or may not see over here ---> ), has been pretty good to us. It pays us a very few dollars every month to put its own sponsored ads on the page. It's run by real women who answer real emails about real questions. Their policies let me opt out of topics I don't want to advertise and places I don't want to go (e.g. politics, diet aids, junk food, animal products, etc.).

In fact, BlogHer is too good to us, and here's the dilemma. Sort of. It's not a huge dilemma. It's a dilemmette. For example, a few days ago they offered me $150 to write one review about an alcoholic beverage that I would probably love hard. I would slurp it up like a cat slurps milk (don't give a cat milk). Plus, they'd buy me my booze. 

To a couple of gals without jobs, $150 and a six-pack is a sweet deal. But, we opt-out of alcohol ads on purpose. If you drink alcohol, you already know it's available. It's not like I'd be advertising the end of Prohibition, which I would do in BOLD PRINT for free as a public service. If you don't drink, there's a good reason, and you don't need me to tell you about some awesome new kind of alcohol that you also won't drink. We turned that offer down.

Today, there's an offer for  generous commissions on sales of a huge, mainstream health-and-beauty corporation. You probably already buy their products every week. I only have to tell you which of their products I use and love, love, LOVE!  [None of them.] We turned that offer down.

So, I'm going to tell you what I actually love and feel good about promoting. It's the only way I can think of to push back against corporate deep-pocketed advertising, and products that aren't really in our best interests. Irony alert: these links go to Amazon pages, because they also treat us well.

• Method laundry detergent. We don't do much laundry, but we do it all with Method. It comes super-concentrated, so it's not weighed down with water and then shipped, heavy and bloated, to its destination. It is cruelty-free: no animal testing, no animal products. It's made in the US. It's perfectly sized for RVs. It smells good.

• Dr. Bronner's castile soaps. We don't wash ourselves much...wait, that's not what I meant to say. It's super-duper-concentrated (don't try to wash with it straight! It's powerful!). Cruelty-free (no animal testing, no animal products, vegetable oil based). Organic. Smells awesome, whichever scent you choose. We bought a big bottle last Thanksgiving in Florida, and we're still using it (I'm tired of peppermint now, by the way, and can't wait to crack open the lavender we just bought). Bonus feature: Dr. Bronner wrote lots of crazy stuff on his products, and they're still there. Fun to read in the shower with your glasses on.

• NOW vegetable glycerin. You can buy glycerin at Walmart, but it's most likely animal-derived. I use this when I make lotion and moisturizer, along with organic aloe vera gel. I got tired of paying lots of money for a decent moisturizer, only to find that it was held together with parabens. I use this vegan facial moisturizer recipe. 

• Nature's Miracle. Animal lovers, don't travel without this. In my time with Annie, we have sheltered ten cats, and this is our must-have. Always. No kidding. This becomes even more crucial as animals age. Now I'm really not kidding.

There's my promo. If you don't buy these things on my say-so, I won't feel bad. More importantly, if you do buy them, I won't feel bad.

Ithaca? or Flagstaff? Here's a clue.

Hint: look at the sky.

This sign seems vaguely suggestive, but I'm not sure why. "Stop in for our signature $5 Downtowner!"

 

I have been told that this hotel is haunted, specifically the bathroom I used.  There were no unexpected encounters.

I don't have a story.

Historic Flagstaff has free parking for cars. We were incredulous, and so put eight quarters into a paperbox.

Obligatory Route 66 picture. No, I mean Route 66 will take YOUR picture.

This young man is on the cusp of wishful thinking.

The Ithaca Commons used to attract the goth kids. These are definitely cheerleader girls.

I'm crazy for bead shops, and I wasn't disappointed by Animas Beads. 

We agree that Flagstaff feels very comfortable. It's like we could slip right into the groove here, if we had a groove. But, OH! their winters.

Here's a rundown of Ithaca: Rundown of Ithaca

You can run down Flagstaff, too.

Most amusing statistic: 

     Ithaca's annual "chance of sunshine" is 49%. This seems high. Flagstaff's is 78%. This seems low.

Far from the madding crowd.

Little Maddox had his first birthday party last night. I know, right? He didn't like cake, but he did like the talking card his Gigi got him.

A baby and a birthday party, and you thought there'd be no picture? You're getting off easy.

But, enough about the adorable baby. Lori surprised Annie and me with a vegan "cheese"cake for our birthdays. You know how you might try a vegan dessert and think "well, if I were vegan I could eat this and survive"? No. You would BEG to be vegan for this cake. You would go home and pour your dairy milk into the streets for this cake. You would picket Elmer's glue for this cake.

Lori asked when she bought it (New Frontiers) if it was really vegan. They checked with the pastry chef who confirmed. We ate it and our taste buds ruled it "completely full of delicious animal products." Lori went back this morning to be SURE it was really vegan, and they gave her the ingredient list. SCORE!

We braced ourselves for the holiday weekend here in the piney woods, and it happened. Sites filled up with toy haulers. What? Everyone is considerate? The really big group right next to us is utterly silent at night, and even in the morning their generator is almost inaudible. They start riding mid-morning.

This is a good crop of riders, and people (including the small kind) seem to be staying on the road. It may be becoming obvious to everyone that the national forests could institute a charred-earth scenario if damage is not stopped and reversed.

The rarely-seen Piney Woods cactus