Media Monday - Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead

Wa-hoo!  It feels good to be back on my normal blogging schedule.  It also feels good to have a cup of coffee beside me.  Coincidence?  I don't think so.  I'm enjoying this once daily dose of caffeine allowed to my pregnant self 'to the last drop'.  But back to the task at hand.

It's Monday, and that means today I bring you a review of something I found online (Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, or other websites) that caught my interest.  Today's selection is a movie Scott and I watched back in November, which made such an impact that it caused us to go out and drop some money on a specialty kitchen appliance.  And you know that when these cheap skates spend money, it's not without conviction.

Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead

This documentary kept popping up on my Netflix recommended queue (it's also on Hulu), and I passed it over time and again.  The cover and title are pretty ridiculous.  I mean, those grey boxers don't inspire a lot of confidence.  But I finally decided to give it a try and, as usual, Netflix was right on in its recommendations.

'Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead' chronicles one man's journey to health and wellness through a self imposed, 60 day juice fast.  He doesn't drink your typical grocery store apple juice.  Joe Cross, with the help of a juicer, makes his own nutrient-packed juice from fresh fruits and veggies.  Starting at 301 lbs and suffering from a chronic disease, Joe takes a road trip across America subsiding only on his home made juice, and the results at the end of 60 days are no less than jaw dropping.

I won't give away the ending, but along the way Joe meets a truck driver, morbidly obese and desperate, who decides to join Joe in his own juice fast.  The two men's valiant battle to regain their bodies, and lives, is nothing short of inspiring.

I highly recommend watching this film.  It will inspire and educate you about the benefits of healthy eating, juicing in particular.  I just bought my own juicer, and have been juicing every day as part of my New Year's goal to eat more whole foods.  It's amazing.  A glass of fresh juice peps me up like a cup of coffee, stays with me, and revs up my energy for hours.  Of course I'm not doing a juice fast right now, being pregnant, but hope to do a short one in the summer to detox my body (if it's OK while nursing).

SO.  Just give this documentary a try, even if the cover looks silly and the idea of an entire movie about juice even sillier.  You won't be disappointed.

Sophie Says What?

Last night, my husband and I were heatedly discussing (very loudly), the Republican presidential primary candidates.  Sophie, who we thought we had safely tucked into bed and was adventuring in dreamland by then, poked her nose around the corner.

Me:  "What do you need, Sophie?  You should be in bed."

Sophie:  " ....... "

Scott:  "Honey, Mommy and I weren't fighting.  We're not mad at each other.  We were just really excited about what we were talking about."

Sophie:  "What were  you talking about?"

Me:  "Well, we're talking about the election for the President."  (Sophie knows about elections, since she got to see one first hand two years ago with Daddy).

Sophie:  "Who's the President?"

Me:  "He's the boss of everybody in America."

Scott:  "And we want the boss to be a good guy, not a mean man."

Sophie (with an indignant look and clenched fists):  "But JESUS is the boss of everybody!  And He's God's Son!  And He takes care of us!"

Well, that put our grownup discussion into perspective.  Why have fear when the God of the Universe is in charge?

A Slice of Sunshine

For some reason there have been pineapples in the produce section of our little desert superstore.  They called to me last week from their little plastic crates, and on impulse I found one that smelled just right and put it in my cart.  Its rough skin felt like the handshake of an old friend in my grasp.

When it was time to cut the fruit open, I stood barefoot on my kitchen tiles, my belly pressed against the counter, knife in hand.  The first slice released the sharp, pungent, sweet smell of the fruit and I was instantly transported back through time and space.

During the pineapple season on Guadalcanal, the Honiara market undergoes a transformation.  Usually the red, spit-stained walkways reek of spoiling, over ripe fruit, the ocean's catch of the day, and hundreds of sweaty, poorly washed bodies.  The sun bakes up this teaming mix of goods and humanity, making the stench palpable from the street.

Pineapple season, however, is different.  For a few weeks every year, each mat is piled with a bumper crop of the prickly fruit.  Warmed by the sun, the fruits release their spicy sweet smell into the air and the whole world smells like pineapple.  The scent lays so heavily that everything around you seems to turn golden, just because of its bright influence.  Pineapple paints the world.

Mom would come home with her van piled high and fragrant.  Ten for $2, fifteen for $3.  She'd slice it up and freeze it, and for weeks afterwards we'd snack on cold little slices of sunshine.  She'd blend it up into smoothies, or dehydrate it and save it for our morning granola out on Luaniua.  My favorite way to eat pineapple, however, was straight from the cutting board.

I'd snag a couple wet, sticky slices and take myself out to the front veranda.  Our house in Honiara perched on the spine of the first big hill that rose off of the harbor.  Balanced on the railing, my toes swinging into nothing, I would slowly eat my snack.  Always save the center for last.  Nibble down around the soft outer flesh that pans it like the sun's rays, the juice trickling down my chin.  My nose filled with the spicy sweetness of the pineapple and the underlying fragrance of frangipani blossoms drifting over from my left.  To my right, softly waving fronds framed the view down to the sea and the islands beyond.

This was bliss.

New Year, New Goals

Happy New Year, everybody!  There's something about starting a new year fresh.  Full of possibility.  You haven't made any mistakes yet, you haven't failed, you don't know what's behind the next bend in the road.  Exciting.  A bit scary (who wouldn't have some trepidation at the state our world is in as we turn the corner into 2012?).  

Looking into the next 12 months that stretch in front of me, I have a few goals I'd like to work towards.  You can call them 'guidelines', or 'things to keep in mind as I live my life'.  Definitely not hard and fast rules, or, for heaven's sake, resolutions.  I did it last year, and although I only kept up with the blog through September (that first trimester was a doozy), the goals remained on my mind throughout the year.  Over 2011, my relationship with Scott reached new depths of intimacy, trust and communication.  My kids and our family became a top priority.  I started to curb the unhealthy lifestyle I had been living, and started a new course towards health.  I wrote more than ever before.  I really think I accomplished these things because I gave myself a target to shoot for in January.

So here are my goals for 2012.  

1.  Focus on Scott.

Yep, it was my number one goal last year, and I'm keeping it for 2012.  Why?  Because I need the reminder that I am a wife first, and everything else second.  Poor guy often gets the dregs of my attention after a long day with the kids and errands.  

2.  Focus on the Kids.

This year, this particular goal means 'homeschool'.  Sophie's turning 5 next month (*gasp* how did that happen??  Wasn't she nursing yesterday?), and it's about time I buckled down to take her education seriously.  I 'play' at it now and then, but haven't put a lot of time and effort into a real schedule for her.  Poor Xander's gotten the short end of the stick as far as my educational attention goes.  What he knows he's basically picked up from Sophie.  I have several goals for both kids.  In the Spring I'm not going to put too much focus on homeschool, because I know in a few months it'll be all I can do to accomplish basic household tasks.  

But by May, I do want Sophie to:  1) learn to count coins.  2) sight read number words.  3) count by 2's and 5's.  4) improve her fluency (and confidence) in reading.  

For Xander:  1) improve fine motor skills (drawing and cutting).  2) learn the letters of his name.  3)  accurately count items from 1 - 20.  4)  learn his shapes.

I also want to implement a workable chore system for them, that we can keep up with as a team.  Sophie'll start getting an allowance as part of this system.

3.  Focus on the House.

It's about time we started all the remodeling projects we've been planning for 3 years.  THIS is the year, Scott and I have decided, that we'll put time, energy and money into getting our home the way we want it.  This includes updates, and also things like creating organizational systems that work for us.  By the end of 2012, I don't want piles of stuff everywhere in the house - like my mother always said, 'a place for everything, and everything in its place'.  

4.  Focus on the Whole.

This is my 'me' goal for 2012.  I want to lead a 'whole-istic' life this year.  I want to be spiritually whole, protecting my hour in the morning with God.  I want to be physically whole on the inside and outside, exercising daily (pilates and walking while pregnant, then working up to running 3 miles again after the baby) and feeding my body (and family) with as much whole, unprocessed food as I can manage.  I want to be creatively whole, giving my writing its proper place in my life and pushing through to write even when the muse takes a vacation.  

These are my goals to live by this year.  I'll revisit them every month, because the accountability last year kept me on track.  My friend Ami's doing the same, which makes sense because she's about as OCD as I am.  Head over to her blog and see what she's doing, and stop back in next month when I grade myself.  

What about you?  Have you made any goals / resolutions for the new year?  

The Muse Returns, and a Panhandle Pit-Stop

Oh my goodness it's been so long.  I haven't pushed myself to write lately (and the muse took a VERY long vacation) but suddenly today I feel that old stirring inside of me.  No, it's not the baby.  It's my creative itch, that oldest friend of my soul.  I feel suddenly like a part of myself that had been lost is now found.  So forgive my superlatives (and the two smileys on my facebook status update, excessive, I know).  I'm so incredibly extremely superbly happy to be writing today.

So we just returned home from a little trip into the Texas Panhandle to see the in-laws.  Any of you who have driven that God forsaken wasteland that lies to the west of Lubbock and Amarillo know that once you pass the succulent town of Hereford, you're out of potty break options until you reach Clovis, NM.

A note on Hereford.  Driving into town, we passed a billboard that read, 'BEEF is NUTRITIOUS!'.  No arguments from these travelers.  Scott and Xander would subsist solely on beef alone if they had their druthers.  Hereford, according to its 'welcome to town' sign, is the Beef Capitol of the World.  It's also the Stink Capitol of the World.  Ten straight miles of feed lots emit the most gut wrenching, vomit inducing smell you'll ever encounter in your life.  Imagine the thousands of cows, all packed together in metal pens awaiting slaughter, doing nothing but eating and stomping their ever increasing piles of feces into a sun fermented soup.  You can understand why we had no desire to stop there for bathroom breaks.

Once it was safe to breathe again, we found ourselves in the wide, flat wasteland of West Texas.  Unbroken furrows of red dirt and grass stretched to the horizon on all sides.  The 'towns' we passed through were little more than an abandoned homestead or two, and a post office with an rusted flagpole out front.

All four of us, having taken full advantage of the hotel's free breakfast an hour ago, were feeling the intense need to relieve ourselves.  The kids were squirming in the backseat, and it wasn't just from excess energy.  The baby was doing aerobics on my bladder.  Scott looked desperately at the odometer.

"It's still 20 miles to Clovis,"  he said.

"I don't think we're going to make it."  I told him.  We both looked out into all that unbroken emptiness.  Our eyes met.

"I'll find a county road,"  he said.

A minute later, we had pulled off the highway, bumped painfully over some railroad tracks, and were a safe distance up the compacted red dirt of a little country road.  When it was his turn, Xander took literally Dad's instructions to, "Pee on the tire."  He had never been given permission to pee UP before!  We sped down the road with a little wet arc on our rear wheel, leaving that particular part of red Texas dirt marked with four little wet spots.

New Beginnings

Hi!  I bet a lot of you are wondering what the heck happened to me.  I haven't written in the last 3 months because I have been:

• sick in the mornings
• tired
• emotional
• constantly nauseus
• sick in the afternoons
• spending a lot of time in my 'happy place'
• neglecting housework and kids
• sick in the evenings
• drinking lots of ginger tea
• eating tons of crackers

Guessed yet?  Yes, that's right, I'm pregnant!  Growing a new little life inside of me.  If you've been following my blog for a while, you'll know that I have lost babies in the past. Those losses make this new little one all the more precious.  I'm safely past the 1st trimester mark, which is why I'm sharing with you all now. 

I'll probably be writing only sporatically while pregnant, and during the sleepless-night phase after the baby comes.  But I know you will all celebrate with me on this addition to our family!  Here's to new beginnings!

Book Chat - Interview with Author Susan Salluce

My friend Susan just published her first book, 'Out of Breath'.  How exciting for her!  The finish line seems sooooo long for me, that I wanted to sit down with her for a virtual 'chat', to discover more about her new book, and what makes her 'tick' as a writer.


So, what inspired you to write your first book?

I was working as a grief therapist, and while I adored my clients and worked very hard on my specialty, I felt a dark cloud over me. A friend/colleague introduced me to the term, Compassion Fatigue. Essentially, I was burned out. While in a group meeting of therapists one morning, the question was asked, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” I exclaimed, “I’d write a book!” Three months later, I resigned. Nine months later, I birthed my first draft of Out of Breath. I’d always wanted to write; fear of failure held me back.

What do you find particularly challenging about the writing process?

To stay present. To shut out the noise around me, whether it be my “to do”  list, laundry, a Costco run, exercising, “shoulds.” The worst: what if this isn’t…funny enough, impacting anyone, doesn’t attract an agent, the market doesn’t pick up, blah, blah, blah. It’s so important to write because I love to write. And I do so love to write…it feeds my soul!

What is the best part of the writing process?

When I make an emotional connection with my reader. My goal in writing Out of Breath, publishing articles about parental bereavement and holiday grief, my short stories about my father's Alzheimer's disease, our family's experience with suicide, is to touch someone. I want to help a person feel less alone in his or her grief. Just the other day, a friend said she read my short story, The Veil, off of my blog, and came away with a sense of being understood and also understanding me; this sense of being human and connected. This is what I loved about being a therapist, and miss, and can now pour into my writing. 

Out of Breath is a novel about parental grief, addiction, and recovery. You say in your book synopsis that,"... it's the prodigal story of grace undeserved." Sounds like something from the New Testament. Are there Christian overtones?

I'll answer that two ways. 1. One of my readers, prior to publication, did not attend church. After she read my book, I asked her to give me her "take" regarding it's spiritual tone. She replied, "You have spiritual overtones?" 2. Another one of my readers is studying at a seminary down south. After finishing, she told me that she thought it was Christ centered and real without being "in your face." I guess the answer to the question is, yes, but the message will be heard differently, based on the life experience of the reader. Isn't life amazing!

Who is your favorite author and what is it about his/her work that you love?

Really? One!! I can’t. Two. My first is Anne Lamott because she is quirky, brutally honest, transparent, her writing brings me to out loud laughter or streaming tears, she has a potty mouth  AND she loves Jesus and she understands grace. I have read all of her books. Twice. Her writing instruction book, Bird by Bird, is my writing Bible. If I can learn to keep the mice in the jar who are tapping at the glass, wanting to scream out that ‘I’m not good enough,’ then I’ll be okay for one more day. My second favorite author is Jodi Picoult. Her characters, ability to build suspense, add tension, and sneak in plot twists, well, she's amazing. I never tire of her books. She's a role model, for sure. Plus, when I’ve written her emails, she actually answers them.

What is the greatest piece of wisdom you ever received?

Writing wise, it’s that I have to develop thick skin and be able to welcome critiquing and criticism. Now, this did not come easy. I am sensitive, cry easy, pour my soul into my writing, and so, when my first draft came back looking as though a red pen leaked all over it, I wanted to put it through the shredder, throw the covers over my head, and toss my laptop into the garbage. Fast forward to the present, I get a critique back, see those red marks, and exclaim, “Yes! That is so right on. How did I not see that?” It’s a process, for sure. I’m still sensitive and cry easily, but not over a critique. Oh, and I have an amazing editor and writing partner, thank you Jordan and Christina.

What is one ‘random’ fact about you?

I try to sneak in a name or special personality trait of people who are close to me into each of my stories. When you read Out of Breath, my upcoming book, No Ordinary Girl, and even some of my short stories, you just might find your name popping up or a personality trait shine through! No, I don't reveal your inner secrets. Much... Just kidding!

What new project are you working on?

I’m juggling a few. One is a humorous, chic-lit book with a twist of self-discovery titled No Ordinary Girl. I’m about 75% through my first draft and hope to complete the rest by next spring. The second is a parenting book for spiritually minded parents of tweens and teens who are struggling with giving over their kids to a social media frenzy world and who want to reclaim their family time. Although the book tackles strong issues, the writing is light, humor-filled, and keeps it real. My third project takes me back to my roots of grief work in that I’ll be a contributing writer for a post-vention program for the bereaved by suicide. I continue to look for ways that I can serve my community and when this writing opportunity popped up, it was a great fit.

Is there one particular event that helped launch your career in writing?

As a matter of fact there is. I entered my book into the South West Writer's contest in 2010, and guess what: I placed in the top three for Mainstream/Literary Novel as judged by HarperCollins. It was so exciting, Danica! I'd never been to New Mexico, so, at the advice of my editor, I packed a bag and flew out to lovely Alberquerque, stayed at a fun hotel, attended the awards ceremony, schmoozed with agents, and came home with an award certificate and a small check. (By the way, it took me a long time to cash that check.) I believe that winning that contest gave me the confidence to publish. It was at that award's ceremony that I heard an agent who'd been in the business for 30+ years say that he was fearing the e-book revolution and that self-publishing was not the red-headed step-child that it used to be. Amen to that and my apologies to any red-headed step-children!

Can we look forward to book tours/author signings for Out of Breath?

Absolutely! My book is already available as an ebook on the Kindle, Nook, and iPad and you can also upload it on any smartphone. I will have traditional books available in November in time for Christmas gifts. My first meet the author event is at Caffe Santoro in the town I live on December 16th from 4-6 pm if anyone is in the neighborhood. Bookshops, cafes, art council groups, and local libraries have expressed interest in having author readings and book signings. I will keep everyone posted on my blog and Facebook. Additionally, I will be visiting bookstores and libraries in Santa Cruz, Ca, as this is the setting of my novel. After that, I’ll branch out and introduce myself to the San Francisco Bay Area Bookstores and libraries. If anyone’s up for a road trip, let me know! You will be able to purchase my books on my website, www.sipnsharewithsusan.com, using your PayPal account or simply signing in as a guest starting in December as well, so please visit my website and follow me on twitter at Twitter@ssalluce.