Day 12

It's Wednesday, and everything's fantastic! I juiced up: red leaf lettuce, parsley, cucumber, celery, carrot, apple, pear, ginger, lime, and fennel this morning and mixed it together to make 4L of juice. That will last the day; I might need to make another L later; we'll see.

The last couple days I've developed excema on the back of my left hand; it's terribly itchy and I keep telling myself it's a detox reaction and that my body will heal itself when it's ready. The other detox symptom I'm having is roseacea on my face; at times my face will be fuscia - REALLY bright and red. I'm glad to be going to Reiki Level One this weekend; perhaps that will help my body release the toxins it has stored up and make this a gentle detox. :) Got a body fat/body water scale yesterday and was a little surprised at the reading, but it is good to have a baseline. Interesting that the naturopath has done as much as he feels he can in terms of helping me cleanse; I'll continue with the juice feast as long as I feel it's helpful (probably 'til Dec 1st or so), as I think there is more that *I* can do. And the one big big key that is missing in my daily life right now is daily exercise. A year ago I was rowing 10 kms a day, 6 days a week. The past year (partly because of surgery; mostly because of laziness), I haven't rowed hardly at all. I really need to exercise regularly and I think it will help immensely for detoxing.

Went to Tai Chi class last night which was good; although I dreamed about it afterwards, too. LOL

We're just at story hr at the library (the kids are in Hallowe'en costumes - very cute!) and are heading to swimming this afternoon (I'll swim a km while the kids are in lessons). We are also putting together two shoeboxes for "Operation Shoebox"; another homeschooling family's church supports this cause - the filled shoeboxes are collected and distributed to underpriviliged children around the world. And then we're off to pick-up our weekly produce box at the local organic farm.

Yesterday we were at the local Nature House for the annual salmon run. Thousands of salmon come up the river to spawn; it's quite something to see (and smelly, later on in the season!). We had an organized fieldtrip with a park naturalist who told the children lots of stories about local First Nations' history and the salmon. It's a beautiful, protected park area and is a joy to take the children into nature (reminding me of Richard Louv's book, Last Child in the Woods - excellent read). We are very very fortunate where we live to be surrounded by large expanses of natural beauty.

DH is home in 53 days. woooo hoooooo.

Story hour's nearly over. Have a great day! :)

Morning comes extremely early sometimes...

Well, with the time change the kids were up at 5 this morning. (I laughed that this seems really early for us, but is really normal for other families we know) They had slept for 10 & 13 hrs, so they did get enough sleep, I think. Our house was chilly this morning; I'm too cheap to turn the electric heat up much, so by 6:30 I had the woodstove going and although it's still going, my teeth were actually chattering about half an hour ago. Part of it is that when I drink cold liquids (water, juices), I feel really cold. And this morning I've had about 1L of water so far. I'm amazed how quickly 12 oz of water go into me. I found it very challenging on the trip to drink enough water each day - when you're spending hours each day driving you don't want to have to stop every fifteen or thirty minutes for bathroom breaks, so I am really appreciating being back at home and getting back into the routine of drinking lots of liquids.

I've been reading a new book: Buddhism for Mothers of Young Children: Becoming a Mindful Parent, by Sarah Napthali. So far (and I'm not very far into it yet) it's really enjoyable. I'll comment more as I read through it.

Other than that, I've noticed my hair coming out lately (and graying, as well). It's been 5 and a half months since I've gone raw, and the same thing happened after going vegan - about 5-6 months after initially changing my diet, I noticed hair coming out whenever I'd run my hands through it - maybe just 3 or 4 or 5 at a time, but the number of times I run my hands through my hair, well... I know they say that we lose on average 100 hairs a day, maybe it's not that I'm losing more than anyone else, I'm just aware of it right now. Anyways, from experience I know that this is temporary and my hair resumes its thickness (I have always had quite thick hair, so a little thinning isn't the end of the world for me) in due time - when it happened the first time (after going vegan), I read that it was a body's way of displaying "shock" at the new, healthier regime, and it's not like it's clumps coming out, it's definitely just a general thinning. I have also read that some people as raw vegans experience a darkening (not graying) of their hair and a thickening as well, so I'm sure that with more dark leafy greens, seaweeds, and algae in my diet, things will balance themselves out.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to drinking lots of green juice and water in the days ahead, and embracing daily movement and meditation into my life. On with my day!