Author: LanternFarmMN

Managing Oral Issues with Clicker Training

Positive reinforcement for the win!

As I mentioned in this post our goal for the weekend was to help Juniper get over her issues with having oral medications or wormer administered. It went really well!

The original plan was to do six clicker training sessions total, three on Saturday, three on Sunday, and then either worm in the last session on Sunday or on Monday. We got it done in five sessions and probably could have done it in four but I didn’t want to push it. We made videos if anyone wants to watch the process but I’ll also outline it here for people who read faster than the videos play.

Session 1

Our goals for the first session were to reestablish the sound that means “yes, well done” and to get Juniper to accept me having my thumb just inside her mouth. This was by far the longest session and it took Juniper forever to relax and just let my thumb sit there.

One of the hardest things about clicker training for me is getting my timing right. You want to make your “yes, well done” sound the MOMENT they give you the behavior you were looking for or when things are clearly not going where you want them to if they even start to give you what you are looking for. That sounds easy, but in practice it can be pretty challenging. As with everything in life you get better with practice and I am very out of practice.

 

Session 2

Our goal for the second session was for Juniper to let me put an empty syringe/tube in her mouth in the same location where you would be placing the tube of medication or wormer. Same premise, start slow and in small steps: tube next to mouth, tube just barely in mouth, tube all the way in mouth. The moment she is calm and accepting at each stage I make the reward sound and then give the treats.

 

Session 3

Our goal for the third session was for Juniper to let me put a syringe/tube with applesauce into her mouth and then squirt applesauce into her mouth. This was also practice for me because I tend to suck at giving wormer. I can never seem to get my hand position correct; I finally get it in their mouth but then can’t deliver the medication because my hand forgets how to work. This was a low pressure way for me to practice administering an oral tube medication as well. Juniper got VERY suspicious once I changed my hand position on the syringe so we had to go back a few steps to just accepting the tube by her mouth, then accepting it just barely in her mouth, before going back to all the way in. Success is in the baby steps!

 

Session 4

Repeat of session 3 – really want to establish that having a tube of something squirted into your mouth isn’t that big of a deal and Juniper did really well this second time with the applesauce so it was a very short session. To be fair most people don’t want to have some unknown substance squirted into their mouth, so her general dislike of the process is not unreasonable.

 

Session 5

Goal is to worm Juniper with no rearing. I opted to dip the wormer tube in some molasses and that helped immensely. To the point that Juniper didn’t want me to take it back out of her mouth and bit on it to try to finish getting all of the molasses. She also kept coming back up to me after we were done hoping for more treats or molasses lollypops even though it had that funny aftertaste. I did do another round of applesauce after the wormer because I didn’t want to end on the bad taste of wormer, though based on how much Juniper wanted to keep going I probably could have.

 

Some additional notes for making sure clicker training sessions go well.

I try to do all of my handling with Leeloo or Juniper in designated horse-human spaces like the round pen. Once we have a barn that will also be a dedicated horse-human space. I try to leave their overall track system for them as their domain and to not do much of anything with them out there.

I only give treats when we are doing clicker training and then I always have the bright blue fanny pack on. This is a very clear signal to the girls that this is a clicker training session and treats will be involved but also that to get treats they must be polite and do something to earn the treat.

End the session with a big reward to help them realize the session is over but to also not feel too disappointed by it being over. This is one that I still need more work with because Juniper made it very clear that she still wanted to work together after I was done and I felt bad denying her the opportunity to learn and do more with me when she wanted to.

Positive reinforcement training is a very effective tool and this round of worming went SO much better than when I tried to give her oral banamine this fall, that attempt involved a lot of rearing which is not safe for anyone.

If you are interested in doing positive reinforcement training find some good learning materials to start with, here are some of my favorites:

Mustang Maddy

The Willing Equine

The Clicker Center

And remember that everything takes practice – we’re aiming for better, not perfect!

Holding Pattern

Where do the days go?

I had a lot of goals for the week and somehow the week came and the week went and those goals did not happen. Well, some of them got worked on, but nothing got finished.

Goal One – Regenerative Farming Research

As I said in this post I have been unhappy with my job for a while and being on sabbatical and working on the Adult Education Certificate has really brough home the fact that I need a new career. Regenerative farming has sparked a lot of hope and excitement in me, and I wanted to do more digging to figure out how I can make this happen. I did find several books I want to read but haven’t gotten much farther than putting holds on them at the library.

Goal Two – Carpel Tunnel Surgery

I wasn’t going to have it done this week, obviously, but I had hoped to get it scheduled. I did meet with the surgeon and he agrees that surgery makes sense as our next step. Now I’m playing phone tag with his scheduler. The surgeon said I should only need 3-4 weeks of down time (in terms of not doing horse chores) but(!) that I can’t actually damage anything if I over do it, it will just hurt until it is done healing. This is great for many reasons, but the biggest is that it takes the pressure off of Nate to do EVERYTHING for the month. Nate and I are hoping that I can get the surgery scheduled for the very beginning of May (what a wonderful birthday gift that will be). I find that I can ignore the issues with my hand/wrist now that I know a solution is on the horizon.

Goal Three – Finish Hay Box Lids

I was so excited when we got our hay box lid solution figured out, as discussed in this post. However actually finishing the lids hasn’t happened yet because I messed up my measurements a bit. When I took the measurements to LeVahn Brothers to get the rest of the pipe for the lid frames I forgot to account for the corner pieces until I was standing at the register in the store. Instead of reasonably stepping out of the non-existent line to take my time to figure it out, I panicked and tried to calculate it quickly in my head. I did it correctly for one direction on all of the boxes but I was off by 2.75 inches in the other direction on all the boxes. Luckily they are too long and not too short so I can just cut them all down, I just haven’t gotten around to doing that. We are getting very sick of playing the fun game where Leeloo and Juniper shove all the hay out of the boxes and we put most the hay back in the boxes. Thankfully it isn’t muddy (yet) and they eat a lot of the hay back off the ground so they aren’t wasting that much but it will be muddy soon and mud or not it is very annoying so I really have to get these lids finished.

Goal Four – Make Progress on the Barn

One of the builders I had reached out to got back to me with some questions this week and we had a good conversation about the building but he still has more to do before he can give me a quote. I also started up another round of phone tag with another builder who I had been in contact with in fall but didn’t get final answers from – hoping I connect with him soon.

Then there were two new things that came up this week. Or rather two very old things that I had completely forgotten about that came back up.

First – Lawns to Legumes Grant

We received a Lawns to Legumes grant!! I had completely forgotten that I applied until the email showed up in my inbox saying we had been awarded one of the grants but I am super excited (and actually happy with past Sara for once)! Now I need to figure out what kind of project will satisfy the grant requirements, will make sense with our long-term goals, and will work with our current short-term setup (i.e. our front yard is now mostly horse paddock). There is a webinar for grantees that happens in two weeks and I am going to hold off on any planning until after that – but I will be staying super excited!

Second – Juniper’s Oral Medication Issues

When we brought Leeloo and Juniper home this fall we wormed them both before putting them in the trailer. I asked Juniper’s previous owner to do it since I didn’t know Juniper at all and some horses don’t like being wormed. It did not go well. In the end it took three people way too long, and with way too much rearing, to get it done. At the time I chalked it up to nerves; owner was sad about letting Juniper go but also had a time crunch that morning and Leeloo was having a meltdown in the trailer so I wasn’t exactly radiating calm. However the vet also had issues just trying to do a dental exam and I was unable to get oral banamine into Juniper using the tube. I knew then that this was something we would have to work on but at the time I was also giving her multiple eye medications 4-6 times a day and I could not afford to miss a dose because I had a pony unwilling to be caught or handled because she was feeling salty after trying to work on her oral issues. Then after weeks and weeks of eye meds followed by the onset of winter I forgot about it; until now. Leeloo is showing signs that she may be dealing with some parasites (coat condition isn’t great and she’s trying to itch her tail on everything – including the gate to the round pen which was NOT safe, thankfully I noticed her right away) and I want to worm her but it makes no sense to worm Leeloo and not Juniper at the same time. This has become priority number one and I am hoping that with some clicker training (positive reinforcement training) I can get Juniper over her oral issues this weekend, or at least over them enough that I can worm them both by Monday.

A mentor of mine once told me “Sometimes you have to be a glacier and wear the mountain down one inch at a time.” Inch by inch I am wearing these mountains down.

Time With Friends is Time Well Spent

I was out of town this weekend visiting with some friends and it was a lovely break from everything. Nate very kindly did all the chores while I was gone; yes, I do realize how amazingly lucky I am to have such a supportive spouse. But that means I don’t have any updates or new things to discuss, other than a reminder that spending time with friends is really important and if you haven’t had a chance to spend some quality time with your friends you should. So instead of a post enjoy this video of baby Leeloo:

It is amazing how much better the video quality is from my phone now than it was from a dedicated video camera in 2009.

Water Woes

updates and setbacks

First some updates

  • Hand/wrist update: After a second round of steroids and occupational hand therapy we decided I need to have the carpel tunnel surgery. The question now is timing. I’m not allowed to lift more than 10 pounds for 3-4 months and with horse chores that is going to be a challenge. Particularly for someone like me who can’t seem to recognize my body’s limits (see this post for a prime example). This means Nate will have to do most (all?) the horse chores for 3-4 months, so it has to be a time that is compatible with both our jobs, which right now looks like late spring or early summer.
  • Barn update: Hansen Pole Buildings sells just the materials to build a pole barn and I have been getting quotes for them for the roughly the same building since 2019 which has been an interesting way to track how insane prices have been the last few years. In 2019 we got a quote for x dollars, in 2020 the cost was 3*x , in 2021 it was 5*x, and now, it’s only 1.5*x! We might actually be able to afford this barn! There are still lots of other things we need numbers for, like labor and foundation work, but before this the cost of  materials alone exceeded our budget and now the materials are at least within our budget so there is a small ray of hope.
  • Mental health update: Overall I am doing better, but this week demonstrated that I’m still not fully back to where I would like to be. I was slightly busier this week than the previous two weeks and those fairly minor tasks used way more mental and emotional energy than they would have in the past so I didn’t get nearly as much done this week as I had planned (and would have been able to do in the past). That being said, I am still doing better than I was at the end of December/early January and am heading in the right direction. I am also trying to get my sleep back to a solid uninterrupted eight hours every night, which will hopefully help with everything. I don’t have insomnia, but I wake up several times a night every night. I usually fall back to sleep quickly but if it happens too close to my normal wakeup time it takes me much longer to fall back asleep and then when my alarm does go off, I feel like I didn’t get any sleep at all. I’m trying to be better about wearing my blue-light blocking glasses at night and attempting to end all screen time by 9:00 PM. Hopefully this will help get me sleeping through the night again and sleeping better helps with everything else.

Now the water woes.

We placed the water tank where it is so we could use the spigot on the front of the house to fill it and plug the tank heater into the outlet on the porch. We know spigots and water and freezing temperatures don’t always mix well so we have an expandable hose that we hook up and unhook every time we have to fill the tank and we shut the water off to the spigot inside the house every time. When they built our house the siding people did not place the framed cutout around the spigot correctly and the spigot is too close to the frame making it extremely difficult to get a hose on or off in the best of weather. Nate and I thought it would be better if we put a quick-disconnect hose attachment on it to get the hose on and off more easily while wearing winter gear. It had been working relatively well, though once we had to use the hairdryer to thaw the quick-disconnect piece. The same thing seemed to have happened this week. I used the hairdryer to get it warm enough that the quick-disconnect moved again then attached the hose, turned the water on and…. water came out of all parts of the spigot. Water everywhere in negative everything degree weather is not good. We got that water all turned off and started trouble shooting. We could try the spigot on the back of the house, but we would need to use our two long hoses. The long hoses did not like negative everything degree weather and refused to uncoil. After what felt like hours wrestling with uncooperative hoses I finally got them all hooked up (or so I thought) and turned on the water. I had to go into the house to turn the water on to the spigot and saw water shooting out from everywhere as soon as I stepped outside so I immediately ran back in and tuned the water off to the spigot and assumed I simply hadn’t gotten the hose attached correctly in this stupid weather and decided I needed to get a hose that could handle the cold and another quick-disconnect attachment. After a trip to Fleet Farm for a new 150-foot super special winter proof hose (that discount comes in super handy!) and another quick-disconnect we hooked everything up again, ran the hose from the back of the house out to the water (the new hose is FAR more cooperative in this weather), turned the water on and…. water came out of all parts of the spigot. Insert your expletive of choice.

The girls of course need water, so we’ve been hauling buckets of water to the water tank every day. Though annoying, this option works fine for Leeloo, it doesn’t work for picky miss Juniper. Juniper demonstrated in that previous terrible cold snap that she doesn’t like the taste of the water from inside the house. We got her to drink that time by adding molasses to her water, but I’m not dumping molasses into all of their drinking water, also having PPID means added sugar isn’t good for her (added sugar isn’t good for any of us!). This time I tried some apple cider vinegar and that seems to be working, which is good, but I don’t want to pour that into our already rusty and not in great condition water tank either. The result is that we’ve been hauling individual buckets of water out to Juniper, which means we’re also hauling individual buckets of water out to Leeloo because if Juniper gets something Leeloo wants it too. Leeloo drinks at a normal rate of speed for a horse and usually downs her bucket very quickly.

Here is a video of Leeloo drinking (which also involves a certain amount of playing):

Juniper, of course, takes forever to drink. FOREVER. You would think we could just leave it there for her to finish in her own sweet time but Leeloo, having finished her water ages ago, gets bored and decides Juniper’s bucket looks like a great toy and will promptly dumps the water out everywhere and start playing with the bucket unless we stand there and guard it.

Remind me again why I wanted to have my horse at home with me?!

Here is a video of Juniper drinking and if you turn the sound on you can hear my conversation with Leeloo as I try to keep her distracted.

We have contacted a plumber who can come out next Tuesday and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that (a) we didn’t do any actual damage to the house and (b) he can figure out some sort of winter solution so we can stop with the buckets.

Hoping that next year we have a barn with winter safe water supplies!

Time for a Change?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I haven’t talked much about my full time job; I’ve been teaching math at a post-secondary two-year school in Minnesota since 2005 and for much of that time I have found my job to be highly rewarding. I felt like I was doing good work and making the world a better place by helping students open the doors that a solid math education offers. Unfortunately, I haven’t been feeling that way the last few years. This last year in particular I feel like my desire to provide a solid math education is now directly at odds with what those in charge want and what many of my students want, which is to just get people to and through my classes, learning need not apply. I should add that by the end of the semester many of my students start to see the value in understanding mathematics, but they don’t often feel that way in the beginning and they can be very vocal about it. I have spent untold hours of my time and untold amounts of my mental and emotional energy fighting back against the forces that want to take the learning out of education and I’m tired. I’m not sure I want to spend what is rest of my working life fighting this fight.

I have a degree in mathematics so there are a lot of other job options out there, but throughout my searching I haven’t found anything that I actually want to do or that gives back to our world or our society in some way. Most of the positions I’ve seen feel like made-up busy work for companies that not only don’t make our world better, but are actively destroying our planet, exploiting their employees, communities, and customers, and in general are everything that is wrong with the world today. I don’t want to spend the rest of my working life caught in the crushing wheels of late stage capitalism.

So what DO I want to do… that is the question I have been pondering for months now. As I said in this post, dreaming about what I would all do if we won the Mega Millions really got me thinking. Up until maybe three years ago, if we were talking about winning a lottery or getting a giant inheritance or something, I said I would stop teaching full time, but I would still want to teach part time because I really do like teaching and I think I’m pretty good at it. This year, when thinking about the Mega Millions, my very first thought was to quit my current soul-destroying job and become a full-time rancher/farmer. Not the giant fifty-stall horse breeding barn of my teenage dreams, but something involving healthy food production that improves the land we are on instead of exploiting it and actively tries to heal our planet instead of destroying it. I want to be a regenerative farmer with a small side business breeding and raising quality horses. 

You may be thinking – wait a minute, in this last post you were saying that you weren’t sure you could ever afford to have even your realistic Plan A horse farm, how the h*** are you affording the start-up costs to begin regenerative farming? That of course is the question I have been obsessing over for a while now and I may have some ideas …

Now here is a video of Leeloo and Juniper being extra frisky before breakfast. 

 

Dream vs. Reality

Who will win?

When the Mega Millions was over a billion dollars the mathematician in me who understands that lotteries are just a tax on people who don’t understand statistics lost out to the dreamer in me who could not help but think of what we could do with that much money! Here is just part of the list I started thinking of:

  • Build the barn and arena I really want 
  • Finish the basement 
  • Finish and pave the driveway 
  • Plant native prairie-based pasture and hay field
  • Put in the fence for the permanent paddock paradise track system
  • Find that third mare (and a donkey, and maybe a gelding)
  • Get a tractor and all the hay making equipment
  • Get an electric pick-up truck
  • Get a horse trailer
  • Build hay and equipment storage buildings
  • Plant more trees

We of course did not win the Mega Millions, which the mathematician in me knew we wouldn’t but the dreamer in me could not help but be disappointed. However, having started really listing all the things that I would like to fulfil my life long dream of having a horse farm I have been facing the reality that without something bordering on the miraculous (like getting picked up as a reality show on the Magnolia Network) or inventing a time machine and getting things done before 2020 (stupid pandemic messing up the stupid economy) that despite having a full time job and working three separate side gigs I don’t think it will happen and I’m not okay with it. This winter has really hammered home that we need to have some sort of indoor space where we can get out of the weather; I know other people have horses in cold climates without any indoor space but I am not those people. I don’t know if I can be happy with only ever having the Plan B version of this dream when my realistic Plan A is already a reality checked version of my ideal Plan A which itself is a massive (and practical) step down from high school Sara’s dream (see drawing below which includes a 50-stall barn, a 100’ x 150’ indoor riding arena, a 100’ x 140’ outdoor riding arena, and a pretty small house – at least teenage Sara and adult Sara still have the same priorities even if teenage Sara had way more energy). As I said in this post, I know this entire thing is a big giant want and that I am lucky and privileged beyond words to even have what we do have, but my heart is just not having it and I’m struggling right now being reasonable when I see other people getting their impractical and expensive dreams and I’m working my a** off and still unable to reach mine.

I’m not giving up on realistic Plan A yet. I am currently waiting on numbers from a few builders, since lumber prices have finally started to come down, and I’ve discovered a site that sells clearance steel buildings and I’m monitoring that regularly, but it has been a struggle to stay hopeful.

 

p.s. this post was written by an actual human and not an AI, you can tell because of all the run on sentences. 

 

Updates

I miss potatoes

The various efforts for improving my mental health have been starting to pay off, I think. Nothing transformational, but small improvements in overall mood and ability to motivate myself to do things that aren’t sitting + something to distract my brain.

I’ve been officially eating what I would call a Whole30 + AIP elements diet for a week now and realized several things:

  • I had let way more sugar back into my diet than I realized. The sugar cravings are hitting me hard. HARD. I haven’t struggled this much since we first started following the paleo diet back in 2011.
  • Combining elements of Whole30 + AIP is making this far more challenging than doing either one alone. Doing that PLUS trying to aim for more omega 3’s versus omega 6’s is not happening. I’ve decided to focus on the Whole30 + AIP thing for 30 days and then we’ll try reincorporating some of the eliminated foods and see how I do. Once that process is finished and I have a better handle on cravings, and a wider base of things to eat, I’ll refocus on the omega 3’s versus omega 6’s. 
  • I need to find some low-sugar carbs that I actually like that are easier to make. My favorite low-sugar carb is the potato and I’m currently avoiding nightshades so that means no potatoes for now; they will be the first (or maybe second) thing I reintroduce when my 30 days are up – dark chocolate  is the alternative option for first reintroduction. My other preferred non-sugar carbs are plantains and cassava (yucca) but they are not as easy or convenient (at least for me) as things like squash or pumpkin or sweet potatoes that you can find peeled, sliced, canned, frozen, etc.
  • I am having a hard time eating enough at meals to actually stay full until the next meal. Mostly because I get sick of veggies real fast and I limit my protein servings because protein things cost too much money. If I can get a handle on finding low-sugar carbs that should help with this one.

I have found a few preparations for those other low-sugar carbs that I have actually enjoyed, at least more than I have enjoyed previous efforts. They were inspired by a cran-apple slaw we made. The pre-cut bags of slaw veggies (regular coleslaw veggies, broccoli slaw, kale slaw, etc.) are super convenient and there is a pre-made slaw dressing (Sweet and Sassy dressing by Salad Girl) that both Nate and I really like and together they make for a very easy side-dish. That being said anything gets boring after a while, so in an effort to change things up I tried adding thawed frozen cranberries and sliced apples (it was very tasty and nice change of pace). I had some extra of each afterwards as well as leftover cooked diced sweet potato from breakfast and decided to try combining them all and heating them up and it was actually pretty tasty. I was then inspired to try that same cran-apple combo with frozen diced butternut squash and shallot. Again good, though I liked the sweet potato version better. Here is my not very well thought out “recipe”

Cran-Apple Sweet Potatoes

  • Cooked diced sweet potato (1/2 cup ish)
  • Chopped up apple (1/4 to 1/2 an apple depending on size of said apple)
  • An amount of fresh or frozen cranberries – I really should measure things – maybe 1/3 cup?
  • Dice up small shallot
  • Grass-fed ghee or butter (an amount – start with ½ tablespoon… maybe)
  • Salt (an amount)

Heat everything up in a pan until everything is the temperature and texture you want it to be.

I did warn you it wasn’t very well thought out.

If you want to try the version with the frozen butternut squash I would recommend heating the apples, cranberries, shallots, ghee, and some salt for a while first to let them caramelize and brown a bit before adding the squash.

One other thing I tried that I kind of liked was combining leftover canned pumpkin with no-sugar-added applesauce – it was… good is a stretch, let’s go with not bad.

Pumpkin Applesauce “Pie Filling” Treat

  • Equal parts canned pumpkin and no-sugar-added applesauce
  • Cinnamon (an amount – be a little careful, cinnamon is one of the few spices I have actually managed to add too much of so I tend to add some, taste it, add some more taste it, until I’m happy. You can always add more, you can’t take it out!)
  • Nutmeg or mace (an amount – again add some, taste, add some more)
  • Grass-fed ghee
  • Salt

Heat everything in a pan until you are happy with the temperature and then eat it and try to tell yourself this is like eating pumpkin pie.

Clearly this will never be a recipe blog – to really hammer that home, enjoy a video of Leeloo doing this weird thing with her tongue at breakfast.

She does this every few days but it doesn’t ever stop her from finishing her meal. I’ll be asking the vet about it the next time I have need to contact them, but everything else about her behavior is normal and we had her teeth checked this fall so I don’t feel compelled to pay a vet bill just yet. 

Here she is letting me know that if Juniper doesn’t want to finish her breakfast, she would be happy to finish it for her.

Three-Act Play

Mine

The website was and still is having some technical difficulties (biggest issue was resolved, but now the videos are not embedding themselves without a time-consuming work around…) but that left no time for writing a post so instead enjoy our first production. It is a three-act play with the working tile of “Mine.”

Act I

Act II

Act III

Before you go feeling too bad for Juniper she has had plenty of chances since then to play with the toy and finds it to be far too much work to get the treats out. It is much easier to follow Leeloo at a safe distance and eat all the treats she doesn’t get being too occupied with the toy itself.

Physical Health 2023 – Phase 1

proactive not reactive

I went to the doctor last week about the increasing issues with my right hand/wrist/arm and got a referral to see a hand therapist again. At that appointment we determined that my carpal tunnel is definitely getting worse and that surgery is probably in the near future and that I also have symptoms of cubital tunnel which impacts the nerve running down the outside of your elbow and causes issues with the pinky and ring finger. Fun times.

I was also put back on steroids and they are definitely helping with the tingling/pins-and-needles issues, which is nice, but I can’t stay on steroids indefinitely. The biggest issue for me is they totally mess up my ability to sleep, and getting good sleep is so important for both my physical health as well as those pesky mental health things I’m trying to manage. Depending on how the physical therapy goes and the reaction to the steroids they may do some imaging but only if it will impact our next stage of possible treatment. I am trying to be proactive and find ways to get the benefits of the steroids without the actual steroids, and I am on them to reduce inflammation so that is my goal – reduce inflammation.

I have more searching to do about ways to reduce inflammation, but my goals for the immediate future are committing to an anti-inflammatory diet, getting a better handle on my sleep, getting serious about meditation, and being very purposeful with my exercise. You may notice that all of those overlap with my goals for getting a handle on my mental health, so I am not going to be adding anything new into my life, just being more focused. The biggest change will be dedicating myself to eating anti-inflammatory foods, and just as importantly (maybe more), eliminating pro-inflammatory foods.

I am not a nutritionist and a lot of people with far more knowledge on the topic than I have, have said a lot about healthy diets. Here is the link to my number one resource, The Paleo Mom, and here is what I am planning on eating for the next three months:

Nate and I have been following some variation of the “paleo” diet since 2011 so this isn’t that different from how we have been eating (most of the time). The biggest change is going to be cutting out the processed foods that are generally considered “paleo friendly” (depending on what paleo diet person you ask). Those include things like arrowroot, tapioca starch, coconut flour, almond flour, etc. As I write this, I am realizing this is pretty close to the Whole30 diet with the exception of the meat and fats. Because the goal is to minimize inflammation, I am trying to focus on getting more omega-3s and less omega-6s and in general grass-fed beef is a better choice than poultry and pork. Fish would be a great choice, but I have two issues with it. First – sourcing fish that is actually (a) the fish it claims to be (b) caught in an ethical manner both in terms of environmental impact and humane working conditions and (c) doesn’t have high levels of other bad things like mercury in it from our extremely polluted oceans is really hard to do and is made even harder when you live in a landlocked state. Second – I don’t like fish. We have been buying grass-fed beef halves from Stone Bridge Beef, a local farmer, for years now; so I feel good about it in terms of quality, environmental impact, and humane working conditions. Also I really like beef.

The other really big thing for my physical health (and mental health) is getting my vitamin D levels up. They are currently very low. 

Standard western medicine says vitamin D should be between 30-80 ng/mL, though some of the sources I look to say it should be more like 50-70 ng/mL. In 2015 I had my vitamin D levels tested and it was 23.5 ng/mL which is low, so I started occasionally taking a supplement. In January 2020 I got tested again and it was at 9 ng/mL. That is not a typo, it was a single digit, nine. That is bad. I have been actively supplementing since then and three years later it is now (there should be a way to do a dramatic pause but I can’t force things like pagination on you so this parenthetical will have to do) 14 ng/mL! Which is technically better, but still way too low; and this is with active supplementation. I’m stepping up the quantity of vitamin D that I am taking plus I am trying to get it from a variety of brands/sources in case there is a quality issue as well. I’m also trying to eat more vitamin D rich foods, the problem is mushrooms and egg yolks are the only ones I really like. Sunlight of course is also a great source but there are all the SKIN CANCER concerns out there, and my skin really hates the sun. I never tan; I turn red, then itchy, then pasty again – plus if my skin is exposed to sun it is also exposed to bugs and we all know how I feel about that. The light therapy bulb I am currently using is technically for reptiles and is supposed to be a full spectrum light that also provides the UVB needed to produce vitamin D so we’ll see if that helps.

I am starting to wonder if my extreme vitamin D deficiency might not be the root cause of many of my other mental and physical health issues. I’m hoping that being super aggressive with supplements and diet can get those vitamin D levels up and maybe make a difference in everything else, but I am also wondering if there might be something else underlying the vitamin D deficiency that is the real root cause. I’m hoping my doctor will be willing to retest in three months to see if my work has paid off.

In the meantime – mushroom omelet anyone?

Stupid Depression

there is always tomorrow

My whatever the hell is going on with my mental health took a turn into zero motivation to do anything at all land and I wasn’t able to get a decent post together. So instead enjoy this video of Juniper trying to figure out how to get the treats out of the treat d20. Nate made the mistake of shaking out some of the leftover bits in front of her, so now she’s aware there are treats in it but hasn’t quite figured out how to get them out on her own. She isn’t as orally fixated as Leeloo, or as bored or as curious as Leeloo, so I’m not sure she will play with it long enough to ever really figure it out.