gadget lust

So in true 40s housewife fashion, the 2 appliances that would make my life complete this week, are a KitchenAid mixer and a VitaMix 5200.
The latter can make icecream in 40 seconds!! Think how amazing that would be if I ate icecream!!
And it makes soup, hot soup, in 7 mins flat. Helloooo??? Okay, so it's
£400, and you'd have to pretty much go into retail soup production to make it worthwhile, but that appliance, that appliance would complete me...
Then the only other things on my list would be a sit up and beg
bicycle, K2 eco rollerblades and a new car. That's IT.
For now...

Cheese please Louise

I recently gave up dairy after being advised to by Nelly the Nutritionist, a crazy old French lady that I hardly know. Seemed like a good idea and I'll pretty much buy into what anyone says these days, if it'll help us get pregnant more quickly. But nothing brings a whiff of disdain into the room, like an unjustified food requirement. By unjustified, I mean, I'm not lactose intolerant, so I have no valid reason to not eat
dairy, at least in the eyes of the cheese eating masses. I'm clearly just doing it for attention.
This suspicion was proved when I asked a friend of mine if she thought
I was being high-maintenance when I refused a biscuit that had dairy
in it. She told me she thought I was being 'extreme'. It's funny, when
you become a vegetarian, do people say, oh c'mon, it's just a few bits
of bacon...or...they're just sweets, who cares if they have gelatin in
them??
Come to find out, we live in a meat-eating, dairy-consuming, sugar-
guzzling, eat-everything society, where if you stray from the 'norm'
for any other reason than if you eat it you will die, you're the weirdo.
Still, I don't miss cheese anymore-for the most part, it disgusts me a
bit. On a rare occasion I'll have a bit of goats cheese, but i don't enjoy it the way i used to, tied up as it now is, in guilt.
I have stopped trying to eat weirdly textured cheese alternatives, and
accepted this new dietary reality of mine. Dairy-free. I like the
sound of that :)

[Which] protein consistently and strongly promoted cancer [in this research]? Casein, which makes up 87% of cow’s milk protein, promoted all stages of the cancer process. What type of protein did not promote cancer, even at high levels of intake? The safe proteins were from plants, including wheat and soy.

– T. Colin Campbell, The China Study

At the Vitality Show, there were plenty of stalls hawking their gluten
free wheat free dairy free taste free products. One in particular had
folks buzzing around the table because of the free samples, it
featured various nuts and seeds and things, enrobed in dark chocolate,
all crunched up and snackalicious. Of course, now my eyes are open,
there's no going back to blindness, so I ruin the fantasy and check
the small print on the back of the packet.
In one 100g serving, it contained 24g of SATURATED fat, and over 30g
of sugar. The daily recommended intake of Sat fat for women is 20g.
Amazing. And this is touted as a 'healthy' snack.

Know what you're putting into your body! Alright, lecture over.

Vitality now!

Yesterday, a friend and i attended the Vitality Show at Earl's Court. I arrived there first, deciding to wait inside the foyer to the massive exhibition centre, as the outside was crowded with mainly women, smoking cigarettes. Vitality, indeed.
The funniest thing we saw was a man massaging a woman, who was face down in a massage chair, oblivious, whilst he read his texts with the other hand.
I decided to have an Indian head massage, £5 for 7 mins. 7 mins seemed like an auspicious amount of time and the diminuitive Indian man seemed nice, so i waited, whilst a wild haired woman finished her turn, my goodie bags weighing my shoulders down, thinking, i just want them to feel light again. How long would that take? What would that even feel like?
My turn now, i take a seat on the plastic chair, in this busy venue, and close my eyes. I can hear the combined noise as a dull roar, like the ocean, in the distance. He starts on my shoulders, dear goodness, i want to ask him, how much would it cost for forever? Regretfully, he moves onto my head, alternating discomfort with soothing rhythms, i can feel my hair is all over the place, and now i am the wild haired one. And then, all too soon, he puts his palms in front of my eyes, and the strangest thing happens. I go from having the awareness of the bright artificial lighting outside of my eyelids to a seeing a burst of the deepest indigo, the most beautiful dark blue, covering everything. I feel the warmth leave as he removes his hands, back to brightness and i wonder if it had been my imagination. But his hands return, and the same colour appears, vivid and rich and encompassing.
Afterwards when i ask him about the colour, he tells me that some people see dark blue or purple, and when he's holding his hands like that, he is transferring positive energy from the Universe. We speak some more, and i learn that he is a priest at weekends, and for a moment i want to sit at his feet and learn the things that he has to teach. I want to see colours again.
But i say thankyou, and move on.
Later, we are having shiatsu massages, a wonderful woman with her white hair cut into a neat bob works on me, i can feel her loving energy, truly. It hurts when she presses my arms, but i think, she's so nice, i don't want to tell her. How female of me. So i breathe through the pain, because i know it will soon be over. I tell her afterwards, and she says that the meridian along the arms spiritually relates to the barriers we put up to protect our hearts, and was there any reason i was protecting my heart...?
I have always protected my heart, or at least, for as long as i can remember. But it strikes me now, that i don't need to do that anymore. That it's my pressing work, at this stage of my life, to actually open it...

A beginning

Welcome.
I've been meaning to do this for so long now, begin another blog, that is.
So here i am, inspired by friends and strangers, inspired by life.
This is me. Now.