starving… and then this gem comes along

you know how it is… you’re doing a detox, and although you’re not hungry, you can’t stop thinking about food…

your sister comes in and shows you a youtube clip…

it ends…

suggestions then appear on the screen…

and you click onto this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t0Ef1Fs2Hw&feature=related

suddenly… not craving food anymore. quite content with my peppermint tea thankyou very much

getting into bed to read.  i’m fairly confident that i’ll be able to get through quite a bit more than last night… reading a recount of a botched experiment in new zealand about women with cancer of the uterus is NOT a doable thing on day one… i now know.  we now all know

can’t stop thinking about food

salmon
eggs
tuna
salt
cooked food
mmmmmmmmmmm

day two of schkinny maninny detox

so i left work at 3.30 and was at uni by 5 (parking was awful).  was meant to spend that hour before class writing up anatomy notes, but instead i lay down on the couch and napped.  I was feeling awfully vague and tired and didn’t want it to continue into the next four hours of classes.

anyway, the dinner soup had cauliflower in it, which i LOVE cooked but i’m not a fan of raw. Pity i don’t have mum and dad’s addiction for raw cauliflower and broccoli.  when i got home i warmed up the almond milk juice and kept on nearly choking to death on the fragments of brazil nuts, it tasted great but was very hard to eat.

this morning had a bit of trouble locating where they’d delivered my juices to… but all good and sorted out in the end.  Didn’t end up having the first juice until quite late, around 10.30, but surprisingly didn’t feel hungry / vague / lethargic at all.

i’m up to juice number two… the inclusion of ginger is making everything a bit spicier, but considering the constant cold i’ve had for the last couple of weeks I know this will do me good.

day one of juice detox

to say i’m time poor during the month of March is the understatement of the century.  not only do i have dad’s, bel’s, dan’s, uncle paul’s and sera’s birthdays, but we also have mum and dad’s wedding anniversary, two deaths (ok, that’s just this year though) and my resubmission was due yesterday.  So… I don’t have time to do my own juice detox.

and… I don’t have a juicer.

so i started googling, found a couple and one sounded quite healthy (despite the name; schkinny maninny, sounds a bit bimbo-ish, plus i’m not doing it for weight loss)

but anyway, it’s quite nice so far.  I’ve had two juices so far, the first was a hideous green which tasted fantastic, with watermelon, spinach and kiwi, then another with carrot and celery (i’ve clearly already forgotten what the labels said)

just had lunch; tomato soup with lentils.  not really a fan of uncooked tomatoes, makes me think of sauce day, but it was really nice.

the only symptoms i’m getting so far is just feeling slightly vague (rereading this post is also making me realise that i’m less funny and dramatic on this detox… worst side effect so far!)

we’ll see how the last 3 juices go, hopefully the vagueness goes away before uni from 6 till 10 (ugh)

god

why why why why why are people intolerant to other religions?

myself included.  i had to be reminded this morning by my friend that i AM included in this; as much as others are pro omni-religious i have to remind myself that i’m at the other end of the scale, being pro (what’s the antonym for omni? …blank) ‘multi’ religious.  i admit i’m not as tolerant as i would like to be to others who think they’re religion is superior.

i made a comment on my friend’s facebook post, which was a video about oprah talking with an author about some book that he’s written, pretty much about mindfulness and openness.  (2 consecutive posts involving oprah… what the hell has happened to me haha).

I quite like mindfulness, it’s a buddhist way of teaching, and i came into contact with it through work.  it’s being used here in australia with clients who have drug and alcohol addictions… and for one organisation has a 100% success rate… that includes their heroin addicts who are NOT simultaneously taking suboxone or buprenorphine or one of those.  sooo… take everything else out, forget about religion, forget about people’s views… mindfulness is working (i want to use the word miracles here but don’t want anyone to get snappy) in a way that nothing, NOTHING, has before for AOD clients.  And it’s certainly not a religious thing that’s being taught to them… it’s pretty much meditation and being ‘mindful’ of their actions.

Medically, i now understand how meditation works, engaging one’s parasympathetic nervous system, allowing the body to fully relax, allowing food to digest properly, relaxation of organs, stimulation of saliva, slows the heart rate etc.  For an AOD client to be able to achieve this is amazing, and must be why they keep coming back for more.  It’s like making your body form it’s own, natural high… without losing friends, family, money etc.

i can’t continue writing what i was going to, cos i’ll end up talking up my own way of thinking and his down, which isn’t fair.  so all i’ll say is what i hold close to my heart:

people have had wars, have died, because of intolerence to other’s beliefs.  and continue to do so.  no religion i can think of doesn’t have a claim to fame on this one

i don’t believe that going to church/mosque/synagogue/temple whatever means that you can act however you want for the rest of the hours of the week.  eg.  ’sinning’ all week… then repenting your sins on sunday doesn’t make you a good person… it makes you a stupid person.  and i refuse to budge on that.

and finally… personally… as a totally lapsed italian catholic who is now totally athiest… talking about negative things all the time make you, and everyone around you, negative.  hell, sin, bad omens etc.  and scaring people with those negative things isn’t making them believe… it’s making them scared.

sigh.

i wish i didn’t care

eat pray love and how italy lies to the world

ok.

so i’m at the sun a few months ago and i see the preview. i think it looks kinda cool.

mum buys the book. stops halfway through it in malaysia (while in the book itself it’s up to india… yoga coincidentally. freudian slip of sorts on mum’s behalf to stop at that point…).

we get back to melbourne, i start reading.

i throw the book from my bed to my floor multiple times, night after night. she’s pretty much had a diary published, with the worst editing i’ve ever seen. i read it and kept screaming ‘what mother fucking style guide IS this shit?!’ i also keet on cursing Oprah, who repeatedly makes stupid women (like myself and partly my mother) read pieces of crap cos she thinks they’re ‘amazing’ and that we should ‘take a look for ourselves’. grr.

eventually, i got the hell over it. you have to read between the lines in the book, cos the words themselves are crappy, for the most part. i don’t dislike the woman or her experiences, but i feel that the hype didn’t match the fact that it was merely a typed and bound diary.

i’m nowhere near the point of this post yet.

i went to watch the movie this arvo with my friend. i’ll be brief with what i thought of it; nowhere near as bad as it’s been rated, skims the surface but it’s a movie, i expect no more. it was still more than enough to inspire me to check out bali.

my problem is this:

ITALY ISN’T LIKE THAT! italy is always shown as this beautiful place, with people enjoying themselves, kissing, dry humping in piazze, happy nuns, plates of spaghetti, sitting at tables to eat (this is probably the most ludicrous thing that was portrayed), people that speak english, italians that want to become friends with strangers, big old apartments, insane amounts of flirting and love on show, that napoli is safe (ha! ha! ha!) etc etc.

now, i understand that it’s a diary, so these things actually happened to her… but there were some parts that were downright lies in the movie. i shall only use one example.

from the book:

…the romans on the street aren’t really giving me any second looks. or even many first looks, for that matter. i found this kind of alarming at first. i’d been to italy once before, back when i was nineteen, and what i remember is being constantly harassed by men on the street. and in the pizzerias. and at the movies. and in the vatican. it was endless and awful. it used to be a real liability about travelling in italy, something that could almost even spoil your appetite… one must wonder, what has changed here? is it me? or is it them? so i ask around, and everybody agrees that, yes, there’s been a true shift in italy in the last ten to fifteen years… maybe it’s just simple embarrassment on the part of young men about the infamous lewdness of their fathers and grandfathers. whatever the cause, though, it seems that italy has decided as a society that this sort of stalking, pestering behaviour toward women is no longer acceptable.

is there a general consensus that people in the rest of the world don’t WANT to see italy in another other light other than that of decades before?  in the movie there was a fleeting scene, merely a 2 second span introduction into a shot, with a few girls traipsing through a piazza with a couple of boys at their heels, literally chasing culo (chasing their asses).  like, not the girls themselves, following the backsides, hands out, gesturing at them and talking to them.

it’s not fucking real!

italy 2001 – 9 years ago.  i went on a contiki tour, and my god, it was like that.  and know what, you complain… but that constant flirting and chasing (as in… literally, physically CHASING) is something we still talk and laugh about today.  it was FUN!  end of story.  and other than some unwanted groping here and there, overall it was old fashioned harmless flirting.  and it always served it’s purpose; one doesn’t feel guilty if you kiss a guy you met the same day when he’s spent the last 3 hours following you, buying you bracelets and fresh coconut and a rose.

italy 2009- last year.  fucking sucked, not for me because i was too busy with my own eat pray love journey, but i looked around the piazza and and clubs and just saw what i see in australia, which is a truly sad state of affairs.  i wasn’t sure who was to blame for the flirtlessness state of florence, but be it feminists or society or travellers… a great big fuck you from me.

when you compliment someone, you feel good.

when you receive that compliment, you feel good.

when you’re politically correct… you’re bored and restrained and AFRAID.  we need to learn when it’s ok to be totally inappropriate and run from being PC.

fin.

#75 yoga retreat

sometimes i blame yoga for my wrists.  sometimes i blame that baby elephant in Thailand.  sometimes nonna’s lupus, mum’s rheumatoid arthritis, the list goes on.  In any case, I can’t do downward facing dog.

I have listed on my 101 that i have to attend 10 meditation classes.  started googling.  separately to that, Tamster suggested we go away to this place with a tipi for a weekend.  While we were all really excited at this prospect, the ban on tobacco really put us off.  Not that any of us smoke, but i truly think a tipi would go hand in hand with my shisha.  actually, who am i kidding… everything goes hand in hand with my shisha.  except bronchitis.

as i typed that sentence i just realised… we probably could have just brought the soex brand and been fine.  bah, no matter

The venue was advertising a bunch of retreats, and Brettski and I decided spur of the moment that we would go to a yoga / meditation weekend.  I was hoping to knock out at least 3 of the meditations from my 10.  I also hoped to understand meditation better by being in that environment for the entire weekend.

mmm… finish this later, have to go to bed with my book on endocrinology.  at least i get the assignment now…

#74 stewbie’s engagement

#73 my brother, his moustache and a whore’s teddy bear

#72 my beautiful sister’s deb