Peppylady asked this question:

We all have our short comings we need to overcome within our lives. So, when you set a goal to change something in your life why do you believe you will fall off the wagon and not complete the process to change from worse to better?

I’ve put a lot of thought into this type of question before. For me personally it’s because I get tired and bored.

Tired
In order to make a change in your life, you have to put a lot of thought into what it is you want to change. I’ll use smoking as my example.

I wanted to quit smoking in the worst way but in order to do so I had to find out why I smoked in the first place. It took me years to figure it out and finally I did. I wanted to be just like my dad, someone I know little about. I had this memory of him sitting in the carport with Harry (my uncle and Dad’s best friend) drinking Budweisers and smoking so when I was nine (yes, really) I started stealing cigarettes from my mother’s husband. And so started my nicotine addiction.

One Thanksgiving (or maybe it was Easter, I forget) I was outside smoking with Harry.

Harry: When did you start smoking?

Me: Um, like 15 years ago.

Harry: Oh. Really? Why?

Me: Why what?

Harry: Why did you start smoking?

Me: to be just like Dad.

Harry [blink, blink]: Your father never smoked.

Me [incredulous] [cough cough sputter sputter]: What????

It took the next five years for me to quit smoking. I tried the patch which made me faint at work. Thankfully I worked at a hospital so I was treated immediately (read: they took the patch off). Then I tried the gum but it gave me heartburn, the hiccups, and the burps. Then I tried cold turkey but that didn’t work very well. Please realize I lived with my mother and husband. Her husband smokes three packs a day so although I would do ok during the day, as soon as I got home I’d start crawling the walls because my addiction was triggered. Finally, I admitted I couldn’t quit without medical intervention so I went to the doctor who prescribed Zyban (spelling?). Within two weeks I quit after smoking for 20 years.

All the times I tried before it took so much energy out of me to resist having a smoke I would become exhausted and would just give in. I just got so tired I couldn’t rationalize myself out of the craving. Certainly as time when on my resolve would be longer and stronger but eventually fatigue would take over and I’d ask for a smoke. And how I enjoyed that first inhale!

Though I haven’t smoked in seven years, I still crave cigarettes. There are days I stand next to smokers just so I can second hand smoke. There have been times when I’ve asked smokers to blow smoke into my face as I inhaled just so I could get that beloved rush. And only once have I had a cigarette since I quit: the week of 9/11. Actually, I didn’t have one, I bought a pack but didn’t finish it. Before the week was over I chucked the pack and have not bought one since nor has a butt been to my lips.

Bored
Sometimes the thing you’re trying to change is something which means you need to develop a routine. Now, I’ve not been successful in consistently exercising but it’s still a good example for me. I want to exercise, I think about it all the time. But as soon as I develop a routine I get bored. I don’t like feeling boxed into a routine, I don’t like feeling trapped, and that’s how I feel when I develop a routine. And I get bored of the same thing over and over. Being that I can’t afford a gym there isn’t much in the way of exercise I can do: walk or run, DVDs. It’s the same movement over and over, day after day.

Ug.

Boring.

So for me those are the reasons I fall off the bandwagon. Fatigue and boredom.

Should you choose to answer this question please link back to Peppylady. She rocks Idaho!

Nature Deva wrote this great post about how food additives have been proven to cause hyperactivity in children. Please take a minute to read it.

I’ve talked about my own struggle with the food I can afford to eat and getting an education and how the two are not compatible. I eat better now than I did when I was a student but that’s because I’m not spending $200 a week on gas and instead the money can go to better food.

In the post I linked to above, I stated by my grandmothers were lunch ladies (for the record, so were two of my aunts. I plan on being a lunch lady someday myself to carry on that tradition =). They watched the manner in which the food was prepared change radically. When both Nanas started their jobs in the late 50s to early 60s, the “Girls” (that’s what they called their fellow workers) came in around 6am to start cooking lunch from scratch. By the time Nana C. was fired (for being too old. She and all the other Girls sued, got their jobs back. Nana wouldn’t go back because she didn’t want to work for “that man.”) in the mid-80s, everything she served was preprocessed. Also, she went from being a town employee to an employee of a private company, one which changed hands a number of times before she was fired. I think she was a employee of Stouffer’s in the end, but don’t quote me on that.

So riddle me this: how can the US claim to be a nation which puts their children first when, in fact, they don’t? The US feeds their children poison food every single day. Then medicated them with more poison for obedience sake. Are parents ignorant of what’s going on in the schools their children attend or do they deliberately ignore the signs and symptoms their children exhibit? I’m not a parent so someone who is please enlighten me. And please explain why you send your kid to a school you *know* is feeding them substandard food. Because, you know, I just don’t get it.

On a semi-related note, take a look at this photo spread. Note how there aren’t many veggies on the table of the “Americans.”

How I miss V66!

Here’s a chance for a little armchair activism for yous all.

Protect Children-Pass the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act (KSCA)

Appetite for a Change

The nation’s toxic chemical regulatory law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), is in drastic need of reform. TSCA is widely regarded as the weakest of all major environmental laws on the books today.

When passed 1976, the Act declared safe some 62,000 chemicals already on the market, even though there were little or no data to support this policy. Since that time another 20,000 chemicals have been put into commerce in the United States, also with little or no data to support their safety.

The human race is now polluted with hundreds of industrial chemicals with little or no understanding of the consequences.

We are at a tipping point, where the pollution in people is increasingly associated with a range of serious diseases and conditions from childhood cancer, to autism, ADHD, learning deficits, infertility, and birth defects. Yet even as our knowledge about the link between chemical exposure and human disease grows, the government has almost no authority to protect people from even the most hazardous chemicals on the market.
Specifically, the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act:

* requires that industrial chemicals be safe for infants, kids and other vulnerable groups;
* requires that new chemicals be safety tested before they are sold;
* requires chemical manufacturers to test and prove that the 62,000 chemicals already on the market that have never been tested are safe in order for them to remain in commerce;
* requires EPA to review “priority” chemicals, those which are found in people, on an expedited schedule;
* requires regular biomonitoring to determine what chemicals are in people and in what amounts;
* requires regular updates of health and safety data and provides EPA with clear authority to request additional information and tests;
* provides incentives for manufacturers to further reduce health hazards;
* requires EPA to promote safer alternatives and alternatives to animal testing;
* protects state and local rights; and
* requires that this information be publicly available.

Please contact your Congresspersons today and urge them to cosponsor the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act.

Grassroots Netroots has surveyed the candidates on how well they will work to preserve our food stuffs.

The Organic Consumers Fund’s 2008 Grassroots Netroots Alliance Survey asks candidates and elected officials whether they support strict organic standards, mandatory labels for genetically engineered food, and the conversion of U.S. farmland to organic. The results are starting to come in…

Go and read the results.

Yesterday I had to have a crown put on my tooth. I was medicated for the procedure.

I came home at 4:30 yesterday afternoon and crawled into be to sleep off the medication. I got up at 7am this morning.

I missed a training drill with the fire department. Bummer.

What say you? Is this demeaning? Or not?

The last few weeks, I’ve been watching Roar, a historical fantasy show staring none other than Heath Ledger. It was filmed in 1997 and lasted for only one season.

The plot goes like this: Connor (Ledger) is an Irish chieftain at the time when Rome was conquering Europe. He has a clan which fights off Queen Diana and Longinus, Rome’s emissaries, who continue to encroach further and further into Ireland.

I have the same complaint about Queen Diana and Longinus as I do about Robin Hood: The Series. They are written so one dimensionally it’s boring as hell. And it’s too bad because it’s a pretty decent show otherwise.

Thing is, this is a problem I see in TV all the time. It’s especially evident in Star Trek (all the series). The bad guy is always getting away, usually because the good guy feels mercy and lets the bad guy go. But really it’s because the show depends on X amount of characters so the bad guy can never die because that would violate the bad guy’s contract. I know the bad guy will be caught over and over and will always get away/be released. It’s just not entertaining to see the same thing happen over and over, in series after series. It induces me to put a baseball bat through the TV because there doesn’t seem to be a point to watching it anymore. It’s just blah, blah, blah until the next episode where the cruelty of the bad guy is demonstrated over and over with no ramifications for their in/actions. Only unnamed red shirts die. Yawn.

Is there any way to resolve this issue within TV or will I always been subjected to plots of bad guys getting away for contract sake?