No regrets

Well it’s been almost a year since I handed in my notice with my last teaching job. I worked until the end of November while they replaced me, but I made the decision about a year ago and that was the big deal as far as I’m concerned. Walking in and telling the principal was terrifying, but the relief once I had was AMAZING!

I quit because my neck pain had gotten worse and my lower back was giving me some mobility issues, in particular with lots of stairs, and I quit with a dream of getting my business completely off the ground and nothing else really. I just had to get out of there, it was scary as hell, my other half was unemployed at the time and we had practically no savings, but I was coming home crying from the pain every evening and the stress of knowing I was failing the kids was killing me! So doctors note in hand I handed in my notice.
A year on, I’m still broke and I’m still sore, but importantly I’m nowhere near as sore, my business is on the up (fingers crossed),I have a part time job essentially playing with power tools and I’m  enjoying getting back into Geology. I really am a million times happier. I changed not just my job, but pretty much every aspect of my life, I’m now a veggie that doesn’t eat dairy, and yoga is a major part of my life. I’m way more mellow and my back makes me cry way less, although now I’m more likely to cry over a cute picture or a sappy movie!

Schools started back in the last few weeks and got me thinking about teaching again, wondering if a little bit of me misses it, a part of me definitely misses the kids and the really good lessons but it honestly must be one of the most stressful jobs in the world. Just after I quit a guy I didn’t know very well, an older man in his 60’s or so, told me that life was about to get much more stressful and that s no one worked harder than the self employed and teaching essentially was a sweet gig,. He was convinced that was what I’d think in a years time. He was wrong, being self employed is stressful you do work hard and you don’t have time off, but on the rare occasion I do take a break, I know it’s just my dreams that I’m “abandoning” for the day, not the dreams, hopes and possibilities of a class full of students. There is nothing like the guilt I used to feel when I gave a not great lesson, or when I couldn’t get a kid involved. Seriously teaching is high stress! So fair dues to you guys that stuck it out and that love it, but I’m much happier and healthier out of it and it was 100% the right choice for me! No regrets!

Now time to get to yoga class...

Womb Yoga and Yoga Nidra weekend

So diet is not the only change I’ve been making to try get on top of my health I’ve also been focusing a fair bit on yoga Recently I’ve mostly been practicing at home, as I let myself get a little too stiff and out of shape after the Nuclear plasty. So about 2 weeks ago I started going back to classes and had a lovely Yin Yoga class at yoga fever before I dived in last weekend with a day of Womb yoga on Sat and a morning of Yoga Nidra on Sunday and wow it was good!

The womb yoga was very interesting it made me realise a few things I hadn’t thought about and got me thinking in a less negative way about periods. She said some very interesting things about societies view of menstruation and how we’re expected to always act how we act when we’re in the ovulating part of our cycle and maybe that drains us and is part of the reason periods hurt so much. Somewhat along the line of when you’re go go go in work and you get a holiday and instead of being able to enjoy it you end up sick and in bed for a week. She also talked about the fact that it’s still seen as a dirty thing we don’t talk about and how ridiculous that is, and there was an interesting discussion about the tampax mother nature adds. As soon as I got home I downloaded a period tracker app for my phone which actually let me choose between dog cat or bunny for my front screen I presume you can guess which I went with :) and I’m planning on downloading and printing this womans quest workbook once I get ink for the printer. Also planning on going next week to another well woman yoga class and sussing it out.

The yoga nidra class was even more interesting, I’m not really sure how it worked to be honest but it got rid of my neck pain for the guts of the rest of the day! Which no drugs have ever done! Essentially we lay down with our knees up on cushions and under a blanket so we were uber comfy and cosy, then listened to what the teacher said. What was strange is I didn’t really hear the words that were said, I zoned out but I was completely relaxed and when he told us to wake up I did, its almost like I’m missing that ten mins or so but I felt great afterwards and my neck didn’t hurt! We did three different sessions which all felt a little different and talked about the whole thing in between and they gave us a CD to try it at home which I intend to do this evening. Really something everyone should experience because I can’t explain it to be honest but it was wonderful!

Butter binges!

Well it’s been a while and I'm still veggie and I’m mostly dairy free, no cheese in weeks now! Doing los of yoga and overall taking a lot less painkillers then I was.

The veggie thing to be honest has been pretty easy, with the exception of a few restaurants that have really lousy veggie options, and I have no inclination to go back to meat, and I like not feeling guilty about whats on my plate. I’ve discovered foods I didn’t know and I feel like I have more energy.

The dairy thing has been a little harder, I changed to Almond milk back at New Years and that’s made my tummy sooooo much happier over all but I was never really a big milk drinker anyway, it was just something to put on my cereal. I was starting however to find I was eating more and more cheese since I turned veggie which I didn’t want to do either health or ethics wise. So I decided to cut it out, and I’ll be honest I did dream about toasted cheese sandwiches a fair bit at first but after about a week and a half I stopped caring, and realised that a lot of the food I was covering in cheese was nicer without.

So now I make my own pizza minus cheese and I get the actual flavours of the tomato the courgette the mushrooms whatever I’ve put on it and wow its soooo much better! Before all I could taste was cheese so it was only the strong meats like pepperoni or the flavours like pineapple that I could taste, not a problem anymore! I have yet to try get a cheese less pizza eating out or at a restaurant though! I have a feeling that will be entertaining! I thought ice cream was going to be the other big problem but then as I’m sure most people have noticed it’s not been a summer that makes you want ice cream, and anyway there is sorbet.

Surprisingly the main stumbling block has been butter. The vegan substitute I got is sweet and I don’t mean sweet as in great I mean sweet as in tastes sugary :(  which I’m not loving, some of the soy based ones might be better but I’m trying not to eat too much soy cause it’s not exactly the best thing for your hormone system and it doesn’t agree with my tummy anyway. I’m considering getting I can’t believe it’s not butter, there is some dairy in it (it’s made from buttermilk) but in fairness I don’t use a lot so I think it will prob be better then depriving myself and everytime I’m drunk binging on butter! ...I wish I was joking!

Why should we or shouldn't we eat meat? Opinions please.

Ok this post is going to be a little bit different, it’s not all about narcissistic me it’s about you and your opinions, and for the record that’s what I’m after, opinions not a fight.

I’ve made no secret of my recent sway to vegetarian and attempts at veganism, I did it for health reasons, I didn’t go oh the poor animals I don’t want to eat them, and interestingly once you say that people generally back off and don’t try to tell you to eat meat! But now I find myself asking why, why for me and not for the animals? I’m an animal lover I’ve had pets all my life, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, budgies, fish and even Henrietta the hen. But up until new years I ate pork, beef, lamb, fish, turkey, venison, rabbit and buckets of chicken! I have even eaten rabbit since I have had my two little bunny girls. To the logical part of my brain this no longer makes sense! I used to tell myself that it’s natural to eat animals we’re top of the food chain and thats that. And the rabbit I ate was a wild rabbit which had a good life and anyway it was delicious. But most of the meat we eat nowadays has had an awful life, especially the chickens and pigs, but we eat them anyway. Honestly I think I just choose to bury my head in the sand, I knew about the battery chickens but I cleared my conscience by saying I couldn’t afford the free range meat, but honestly it’s not been hard giving it up and I wish I’d done it earlier.

I have a friend who’s family have a deer farm and I’ve been there and I’ve seen the animals and if I go there again I’ll eat deer, because those animals have a pretty good life. So there are exceptions, but for the food most of us buy every week in Tesco or whatever those animals have had a pretty rubbish life!

So anyway, my question to people is, why do YOU eat (or not eat) meat? Do you have a reason that you think makes it ok? ......Again I’m not trying to start a fight, I honestly want to know, I can’t resolve it in my head and I would like other peoples input.

.....Also on a side note to anyone in Ireland or the UK who has knowledge of the dairy industry, up until recently I’d never thought about it, but do cows need to be kept pregnant or have recently calved to produce milk? Do the calves get taken away from them straight away so we can have the milk instead? All the stuff I’ve read on the topic is US based and they seem to make torturing animals a sport over there (by they I mean factory farmers) so I want to know what it’s like here.  

Discogram and Nuclear Plasty Oh my!

Well quick catch up!

I had my discogram and nuclear plasty about 3 weeks ago now, and fortunately I remember very little of it. I was awake, it’s one of those things you need to be awake for, but the anaesthesiologist was fab! And funny! So he gave me some drugs; Michael Jackson juice according to the doc, and I don’t remember anything. I was home 2 hours later. Just tired and battered, however the next day I got worse and the following week was pretty much me sitting in a chair not moving. Unfortunately it’s a it gets worse before it gets better treatment, so for the guts of a week Conan had to do everything for me, very, very frustrating! Everyone should be able to put their own socks on! I have gotten better since, but I’m not sure yet if I’m better then I was before, but it’s still relatively early days. Essentially they burnt away the centre or nucleus of a disc in my back and the idea is that it will shrink in on itself and stop bulging out and pressing on nerves and stuff. Fingers crossed. Follow up appointment is in June.

I’ve been trying to get back into my yoga, took a few weeks off on account of not really being able to walk  :) and it’s nice to be back, taking it easy and just doing gentle stuff at home with the bunnies. Everyone should have a chance to do yoga with bunnies climbing all over you! I have just broken down and sat there laughing a few times, the girls never fail to cheer me up!

The pain from the cyst has popped up a few times but not too bad and not much I can do about it anyway so C’est la vie! I’m reading up on vegan diets and various superfoods and at the mo I’m mostly vegan. I have been eating a little meat, but more and more I really can’t be bothered when I do, there is so much yummy food out there anyway!

Tough weekend

Well I spent this weekend in the hospital, it's the first time in my life I have ever spent a night in hospital and the food was worse then I expected! I'm fine now just got to take things easy for a few days which given that doing half a sink of dishes tired me out I think I should be able to manage!

What happened was I had pretty bad stomach pain on Thurs night so took a few pills for wind etc and hoped it would go away but the next morning it was still bad so I went to the GP who suspected appendicitis and sent me straight to hospital. I got an ultrasound pretty quickly (about 5 hours after I arrived I'm told that I was lucky to get it same day) and then the scans got lost! So the doctors decided to be cautious and kept me in planning on doing a keyhole surgery the next day to see what was going on.

Next morning I wasn't as sore, I was hungry and the pain wasn't on my right side anymore so the docs decided not appendix and everyone stopped moving fast on stuff, gynecology came to see me and said I wasn't theirs (still my scans were lost) and surgery decided to keep me in a little longer just to keep an eye on me.

Sunday morning I felt much better, not so much pain as a bit bruised and worn out and woohoo my scans had been found and it was a gynecology problem. I had an ovarian cyst which bled into itself, its not serious, it just hurts like hell, so they sent me home with panadol and said take it easy for a few days! Would have been home Friday if they hadn't lost my bloody scans!

All in all though it wasn't too bad, very boring and I will be getting a smart phone before I go in for my back surgery! The nurses were lovely and the other patients were really really nice! The food was amazingly bad! Pizza and chips! Bad pizza and bad chips for dinner, and tiny portions! Thank you Conan for bringing me in decent food!

Really nice to be home now! Best nights sleep ever last night! And great lie in!

.....As for the veggie stuff, well I've gone back to eating beef, and had a lovely casserole last Sunday also had Chinese beef satay on wed night and a few bites of left overs about 5 mins before I doubled over in pain on Thurs! I'm not sure if that means anything but it has got me wondering, I think I'll stay veggie for the next week or so and then when I try it again if I get sick thats that for meat!

Hard but fun week.

Well it’s been a long week, lots of dinosaurs and fun was had but I’m wrecked and need time to recover, no time since I’m working tomorrow so an early night tonight and then hopefully that will get me through to Thursday which I so far have blissfully free!

The pain levels are getting pretty bad and I have been relying a lot on my meds, I know its life style that makes it worse but there doesn’t seem to be an option. I don’t qualify for any benefits cause Conan makes too much (he sooo doesn’t) and a business takes a while to get off the ground, I’m happy with how it’s going and growing but it’s still early days. So I’m taking what work I can, and mid term meant lots of work.

Orla is reading up to see if she can help me at all

So far I’m still veggie but I think I will be reintroducing beef shortly, I have discovered lots of new veg and new types of food so I’m going to remain primarily veggie but beef is going back on the menu as is lamb/mutton; but I was never a big fan of that anyway. Human beings are omnivores and I personally have come to the conclusion that meat supplies us with stuff we need but we don’t need anywhere near as much as most of us eat and we don’t need it from animals which have been tortured and or had no life. The animals are not healthy, so why would we be healthy eating them. I don’t think Chicken and pork provide me with any nutrients that I can’t get from veg or beef so they’re off the menu!

I foresee the biggest problem being Chinese buffets, I know they’re bad for me, and I don’t go often but will be hard to resist all the chicken dishes when I do and I need to find out about the treatment of ducks, cause yum! I’m also not sure where I stand on fish. That requires more thought!

For now I’m going to curl up in bed with a book and hopefully everything will hurt less in the morning!

Help and opinions wanted on this whole vegetarian thing...please!

So I’ve been vegetarian about a month and a half now, and I’m confused!

I’m not finding it that hard at home, cooking is easy, eating out is not! I have had to think outside the box but it’s fine and we’ve had some lovely interesting meals! Discovered leeks and artichokes which I quite like and some nice pastry dishes 
But now I’m wondering if I’m doing the right thing? I’ve not noticed a health difference, of course I know that it’s still early days, but I have been trying to do my homework and some of the anti meat information out there is too off the wall and or the science is just wrong!

I think the biggest difference I have found is using almond milk in my cereal rather than cows milk, my tummy hurts a lot less, there is waaaay less incidents of I need the toilet NOW! So I will be keeping that up!

Aside from that I have managed to come to some conclusions
• Yes if you have the time, the energy and the will you can have a healthy vegetarian diet.
• I could probably never give up eggs! I am also very suspicious of egg replacements which seem to be used in lots of vegan recipes, I like my food to be something I could gather or harvest or kill myself if I needed to!
• I have decided that ethically I can’t deal with eating commercially farmed Chickens, or Pork, ethics wasn’t why I got into this but we really do treat them awfully! Beef in the UK and Ireland I am ethically ok with (not in the US) and I never really liked lamb anyway. Other meats I would deal with on a case by case basis, for example venison I am fine with shot wild or from my friends farm cause I’ve seen they treat their animals well. Wild Rabbit also fine with and I want to look up whats the deal with commercially available duck.
• I have also decided that as a society we are eating too much meat, nevermind if it’s good or bad to be veggie, I think it’s bad to eat sooo much meat and for it to just be the thing you thoughtlessly throw into a dinner to bulk it up.
• I have also decided that there are a lot of people on both sides of the debate that wont listen to the other side. Which makes actually finding out the facts difficult! The vegetarians are considered crazy tree hugging hippies and the meat/dairy industry and the government are considered liars that are just in it for the money. The problem is I can see both sides being right and wrong!

So I’m trying to decide do I stay vegetarian or do I consider having some beef every now and then, is there actually a good reason that health wise I should stay off meat? Or am I in fact robbing my body of essential vitamins and proteins?

Help and opinions please! Has anyone any personal experience? Does anyone know any good science that leans either way?

The cooking continues.

Well I’m keeping up so far with this veggie thing! I can do it! And poor Conan has to just go along with a lot of it! I found this video though and its this idea that’s got me going veggie. I’m not this badly off at all, but as far as my neck pain goes the doctors just seem to have handed me a huge bag of pills and said bye bye. If something as basic as changing my diet can help get off the pills and have a quality of life then I’m going for it!

So I made the lentil sprout burgers, I added some bean sprouts too! And I had my camera out : 

The sprouts growing in my little sprouter

Picked them and stuck them in a bowl of water to get the husks off.

Lazy way to dry them :) 

Close up 

I loooove playing with the food processor, the sprouts didn't stand a chance! 

Very gooey batter

Fried them up, they were definitely more fritter then burger

Cooked "burger"

 Of course served with a salad full of other types of sprouts, mostly sunflower, broccoli and mustard.

Yummy salad full of other sprouts and peppers and seeds. 

They were interesting, I’m definitely going to try them again but definitely with more herbs and spices and veg. They were really more fritters then burgers and the initial batter was far too liquid so I added mushrooms to bulk and it worked quite well. Tried them cold the next day, nasty! And one of the few things that adding melted cheese to doesn’t help! Definitely only good for one meal don’t make extra for leftovers!

I’ve another bunch of sprouts growing, so might give the burgers another go next week!

Then on Wednesday night I cooked my first ever nut roast, it turned out quite well although it’s going to need tinkering with the recipe too, I’ll post it here when I get it right. But it was a pretty good first attempt and Conan even had it for lunch cold the next day with no complaints.

Last night I Mousakaed it up! And it was goooooooood! I just replaced the mince with mushrooms and it;s just as good as with the meat, and best of all we have plenty left this evening so I don’t need to bother to cook, just reheat it J ...maybe with a bit of garlic bread!

So ye I think with a bit of effort and thought I can definitely do veggie, vegan however is a long ways off!

Oh wow! I better get going if I’m going to yoga, very tempted to just do it at home instead, after I did yesterday and the bunnies decided to join in and climb all over me! Was fantastic fun! 

up and down

Well my pain levels have been up and down lately, I did get through a fair few days (3) with no pills aside from my one I have to take everyday. I felt great! So proud of myself, it was mostly a result of resting, yoga and not being stressed, but then that all went down the loo when I was manic busy towards the end of last week and I was back to popping pills like crazy yay!

So today I have allowed myself a little break to do what I feel like doing, of course that has involved lots of etsy browsing and business stuff, but it has also involved an hour or so on the sofa with a book and I’m going to go do some yoga now and then attempt to make a nice dinner or sprout burgers! Fingers crossed they taste as good as this picture looks!

I have been growing lots of sprouts so I’m looking for new ways to eat them. It’s just sooo much fun eating something I grew myself and since we don’t have a garden this is really the best we can do. I have been veggie almost two weeks now! Go me! Not missing meat at all, although I think Conan might be J I’m not forcing him to join me but I’m not bothered to put chicken in stuff if I don’t have to so he’s been having a lot less. Although he’s making up for it with fry ups, we came back at Christmas with lots of sausages and white pudding from Ireland which it’s now down to him to eat! I’m really really hoping the veggie thing will help! And I know I should be giving up dairy too but one thing at a time!

In other news the bunnies are well, their ears look much better and hopefully tomorrow will be the last day of us torturing them with ear drops. They will be very very relieved! Right lets try make these burgers.....I have back up enchiladas for Conan just in case!   

In case anyone is interested here and here is lots of sprouting info :) 

Nice and chilled out

I’ve just had the nicest half hour! I went to say hello to the bunnies and give them a rub and they decided to come out and play with me, they ran around me and climbed up on me and I scrambled at an old towel with them and then just sat reading my book; The Kind Diet with them for a while. It was really really good for the soul J I’d be lost without those little girls, although I do wish Gráinne wouldn’t keep trying to bite her sisters bum!

This has actually been a pretty nice day, one of the first in a while that I’ve had alone in the apt, I got back to my workbench for the first time since before Christmas, and it was great! I didn’t get a huge amount done cause my neck is a little sore but I’m chilled and relaxed and not going to beat myself up about that! I’m going to plant some more seeds now, I want a basil plant! And cook a yummy dinner to eat cuddled up on the sofa with my boy!

Hope everyone else is as chilled as me! 

Ps: Just want to share this picture; while I was back in Ireland over the Christmas I got to go to the house of some good friends; Paul and Jen who have the cutest cuddly dogs J and they seemed to think I was pretty cuddly too.

It was great to see everyone I got to see while I was home and if I didn’t manage to see you I’m sorry! Hopefully next time!