Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Thanks to all who participated in the thinkThin Wellness Giveaway! Winners have been contacted via email or I replied to your comment on the blog post. Please email me your mailing address at kait@rbitzer.com.


I also updated my recipe page and video page for more nutrition information!




And now another high protein breakfast from Amy! 

 
The cookie is a high protein, high fiber, and very filling breakfast. They also happen to be convenient for people who have busy mornings since it is made the night before.

• 1/3 cup old fashion oats 
• 1Tbsp peanut butter 
• 1/2 scoop protein powder
• 1/8 cup chocolate almond milk
• 1/2 banana for the cookie, 1/2 for topping 
• 1 tsp agave nectar (optional) 

All you have to do is combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Once they are all mixed place them on a small plate or tupperware and put it in the fridge over night!

Seriously. Rick Santorum has called the Democratic Party the "Party of Woodstock." I'm trying to picture President Obama jamming in the mud to "Purple Haze." Ooops! Fail.

I'm old enough to remember Woodstock, and truth be told, much more has been made of it in the ensuing years than was made of it at the time. I do know that the televised images of young people cavorting in the rain, in various states of undress and in various states of altered consciousness, scared the crap out of Middle America. But it took a while for that to happen.

Actually, the fact that we aren't a Woodstock generation should say it all. A true Party of Woodstock would be way left of center, we would have legalized weed, and corporations would be required to smile on their brothers, everybody get together, gotta love one another right now. Does that sound like America to you?

Let me tell Moron Rick and all you young whippersnappers what life was like in the years immediately after Woodstock.

In public school health class, segregated by gender, we girls were told exactly how to prevent pregnancy. We were shown all the different ways it could be done. The teacher passed around an unopened package of birth control pills and told us where to go to get them for free. We passed around a diaphragm and saw a film on how an IUD worked. Many of my friends promptly went to the state-funded free clinic and got their pills. They didn't need to tell a parent about the appointment or the pills.

I had plenty of high school classmates who were sexually active. No one got pregnant.

When I went into college, still in the 1970s, I got free pills from the state-funded dispensary too. I used them. I never got pregnant until I wanted to. One of my friends was not so lucky. Friend's mom found Friend's pills in the medicine cabinet (while snooping) and demanded Friend stop taking them immediately. Within three months, Friend had to get an abortion, which she had to hide from her family. She got it without question (and without ultrasound) at a state-funded clinic.

Why are we going backwards on this? Who are these people, and why do they care what women do with their lives? I don't understand it at all.

You know what I think? I think we need a Party of Woodstock. If I could get family planning classes in 1975, and now I can go to my 35th anniversary class reunion and see photos of plump, smiling grandchildren, I don't think anyone got harmed by learning how to prevent pregnancy.

If there are any young gals reading this here Pagan diary, let me just say that I feel sorry for you. What was easy for my generation has become a struggle for you ... and it looks to get worse before it gets better.

I'll do my part to put things back on track. But girls: It's really up to you. Vote for your autonomy. And above all else, act responsibly ... no matter how hard it is to find those pills these days.

Day One of the stomach flu, I pretty much stayed on the couch watching t.v. After a day of that, having a job seemed like a great big blessing.

Day Two, I felt better. So I grabbed the Netbook and started messing around.

"The Gods Are Bored" is such a fabulous intellectual property that I thought I'd better secure its name elsewhere. So I fumbled through Tumblr and made one for "The Gods Are Bored." If you have a Tumblr, come and follow me! I'll be posting different stuff there from here ... but this blog will still be your central clearinghouse for all things bored god.

Day Three, it's cold as can be outside, but I took a minute to mess around with the camera in this Netbook. Voila! Here's my Shrine of the Mists, lieblings!
Okay, okay. It's not quite focused. Neither am I.

Most of the rocks on this shrine are from my former farm. I brought a few at a time every time I visited over the last 18 months. There's some Marcellus shale and some brachiopod fossils. Around the flat stone are landscaping pebbles, Marcellus shale,  sea glass, quartz crystals, marbles, various weird stones I've found, sea shells, and leaves from the surrounding trees. At night I put a single candle on the flat stone and shield it with a hurricane globe, but only if meteorological conditions are right. This is the place where I "All Hail" the very most ancient deities whose names have been lost to time.

Some nights I speak to the Green Man here. I have learned to be very careful what I say.

I went back and forth philosophically over whether to post pictures of my shrine, since it is such a personal thing. However, I have had many people ask me how to make one, and what it should look like. Well, here's what it looks like, and if I get enough comments, I'll write a post about how it was made.

Trust me, you can do this. I only worked as a stone mason for part of one summer. And that was a long, long time ago.

I think it's a bit of serendipity that I'm sitting here at home with a case of the stomach flu on the day that my grandfather's property passes out of my hands forever. As I write this, the settlement is being completed out in Bedford, PA on the place I lovingly called Big Rock.

Today would not have been a good day for me to be at school, dealing with 110 teenagers and various adults. If I felt well I would be irritable and snappish, likely to do or say something out of character. Perhaps the bored gods saw that eventuality and stuck me in bed for two days.

Funny thing is, the sale of this land is almost exactly the same situation in that movie, "The Descendants," except that in the movie there are a lot more cousins in the mix. I just have an uncle, a sister, and three cousins. And no George Clooney on hand to save the day.

My sister sent me an email. She and her husband and their newly-adopted 8-year-old are going to the settlement, so they can sign the papers and get their check today. Sis was angry when I held up the sale for irregularities, back in January. Apparently she is desperate for the money.

Sis took custody of two boys back in May of 2011, wards of a private Christian adoption agency from which they were bought (something like $30,000). This agency did not require any parenting classes and did not contact next-of-kin for references. Nor did they disclose that the boys being adopted were born to a mother who was abusing alcohol and crack cocaine while they were in utero. Sis has already "returned to sender" the younger of the two, a boy who has all the symptoms of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, a boy who was shuttled between indifferent Christian foster families and orphanages and a crazy grandmother for the first years of his life. He was in Sis's home for about four months.

In her email, Sis said she was taking the remaining boy up to the property settlement "so he can meet at least a little bit of his family."

From where I'm sitting I think it would be better if the kid had the stomach flu himself today.

I dunno ...  I just don't see a property settlement table as an optimal place for a troubled adoptee to meet and greet the last remaining member of my dad's generation. Two hours in the car one way, a lawyer's office, maybe lunch at a diner in the little county seat, maybe a long back-roads drive down to the house that is being cleaned out ... Long drive home with a vague memory of some tall old man with an odd stare and a white beard. Who may himself be crying today, given that he's signing the papers on the place he has called home since 1978.

This is just another example of Sis's inability to engage the reality portion of life.

I wonder what she will do with the $23,000-and-change portion of the farm that is her due? She says that she and her husband have exhausted their retirement savings. To hear someone admit this at age 47 -- having just adopted an eight-year-old -- is rather frightening.

So. I get $23,000-and-change too. Which is either two years' state and local taxes in Snobville or a year of college tuition for The Spare.

Now, now, readers ... Don't tempt me to blow the dough on a fancy new car or a couple trips to some island. I don't roll that way. Maybe, four years or so from now, I'll buy a couple of acres of land. Or maybe not. It would be better to hear America singing right where I am, close by the ghost of Walt Whitman.

Oh ... one piece of big good news! The East Coast Vulture Festival gave the a-okay sign to the buzzard costume rental! I may be the only vulture at the fair!

I hope you don't get this stomach bug. It's a ripper.

BY: Amy Bortnick

I LOVE oats, hot, cold, in my yogurt, in my muffins, in bread, I mean the possibilities are endless. Lately I have been searching blogs and the web for perfect “overnight oats”! Basically, overnight oats are just oats you let soak in some combination of liquid, yogurt, and spices (optional) overnight and then enjoy in the morning! I couldn’t find the perfect combination of ingredients for myself online so I decided to experiment and here is my first trial:
Ingredients:

·         ½ cup plain non-fat Dannon yogurt
·         ½ cup vanilla unsweetened almond milk
·         ½ cup old fashion oats
·         1 tsp cinnamon
·         3 slices frozen peaches
·         handful of raspberries
·         ½ oz of almonds