Life on the Road

No, that doesn’t say “Fast Food that is good” - it says good food that is quick! 

Once upon a time, I made my own meal replacement bars.  When I only had one child, such things seemed possible.  Today?  Not so much.

Sometimes I do eat the commercial bars out there … Zone, Luna, PowerBar, and that sort of thing.  But they’re pretty pricey (over a dollar, even in bulk), and they do have some stuff in them that’s just as well done without.

So I was excited to read about Bizzy Lizzy Bakery’s “Hearty Cookies” (aka “Breakfast Cookies”).

We tried the Hearty Chocolate Chip variety.

I was surprised as soon as I opened the box.  Each cookie is sealed in an individual airtight baggie!  I guess you CAN keep the fresh-baked taste, at least for a little while…

My whole family loved them!  Nick would have eaten a whole bunch of them a la “cookies and milk,” if I hadn’t stopped him to save some for the rest of use.

They’re not just “cookies,” and they deserve more respect than that! 

They taste good enough to be cookies, but they’re full of nutrition, and could actually be a hearty snack.  I wouldn’t call one cookie “breakfast,” even with milk…  But we still eat largely on the bodybuilding schedule of five or six small meals a day., and a cookie and milk makes a perfect mid-meal meal!

The price intimidated me at first:  $24.95 sounds like a lot for some cookies! 

But shipping is included, which would probably add a lot to the back-end, as these babies are heavy!  And most importantly, they aren’t “just cookies” like your average oreo, so that’s not a fair price comparison.  Remember back at the beginning of the post where I said PowerBars were over $1 each, even in bulk…  Well there ya go!  And these are better, too.

There’s also one other magic ingredient that other snack bars don’t have:  they’re made just for you, with love.

“Lizzy” is a real person, and the family business is to make these fresh goodies just for you.  Can’t beat that…

P.S. Aside from their everyday usefulness, I’m going to sock some away in the freezer for those tough days at the end of the pregnancy, with a brand-new baby, and as snacks by the nursing chair! 

So we came here because the circumstances were right to settle down while we have a baby.  But of course we had no idea what we were getting into as far as the outlook for having a baby in the state of Florida.

Baptist seems to own almost all the hospitals here, and the description of the Birth Center at the brand-new hospital here in Homestead sounded great.  So we went for a tour.

I was… I don’t think it’s too strong a word… horrified. 

Wolf said it “lived up to every modern birthing horror that you’ve dreamed about in your darkest subconscious recess”, so you see it really wasn’t just my hormones getting the better of me.

Let me share with you just a few of the highlights (lowlights?) of the tour:

• While showing us the labor/delivery room, I noticed that the beds had the connectors for squat bars.  I asked the nurse if the had them available, and she said that, gosh, they must have them somewhere, but they’ve only been in the new building for a few months, and she didn’t know where they were, probably in a storage closet somewhere…
• Hospital policy is for continuous fetal monitoring - so mom is confined to bed upon arrival.
• We arrived at the lounge area near the nurses’ station where she pointed out the microwave (for dad, since you won’t be eating anything), and the fridge, which had juice in it (for dad, since you can’t be having any).  She grudgingly conceeded that I could have ice chips, or we could bring popsicles for me to suck on occasionally.
• She showed us the nursery.  I wanted to clarify that if there wasn’t any emergency, they would never have to take the baby out of my room.  She hemmed and hawed.  This conversation led to the big revelation, when she said, “You know, those people who come in with birth plans [Oooh, the way she said it! Yikes!], 90% of the time they end up with C-sections, because something comes up…”
• We moved on to the recovery rooms.  I said that I’d had two babies already and had never yet seen a recovery room, so I doubted I would stay long enough to need one this time.  She was speechless.  I looked around at the small bed, and spartan room, and asked about rooming in with baby (figured I’d find out, since you never know…).  She off-handedly said that they could certainly bring baby to me there, since they had the wheeled carriages to transport them in…

At the conculsion of this enlightening experience, we asked for a list of ob’s that delivered there.  Wolf asked if she had any recommendations for which ones might be best if we were looking for a more natural birth experience.

She hemmed and hawed some more, and finally just said straight out that most of the doctors in the area were very traditional/conservative, and it was the result of an extremely litigous climate in the state of Florida.  She offered the name of a group of midwives, suggesting we might have better luck with them.

I just stewed for a couple of days.  After the challenges the accompanied Jewel’s birth, I don’t feel comfortable doing a homebirth with this one, so my options were starting to look pretty limited.  This was going to be harder than I thought.

Luckily, the local chapter of La Leche League was meeting that week.  If anyone would know how to have a natural birth in this crazy place, it surely would be them… 

Sure enough, nobody was having any nursing challenges, so the small meeting happily got off topic to discuss births.  All agreed that the lawsuit-happy Floridians had created a very inhosptiable climate in hospitals, and one mom said she had travelled out of state to have a VBAC!

The highlight of the discussion was a new mom’s testimony about the Miami Maternity Center.  But that’s another story…  

Last Friday was a singularly exasperating day.  It wasn’t until it was almost over that I got the “Ah-Ha” moment about a totally different way to interpret the events…  But let me begin at the beginning.

Thursday morning, Jewel woke up with a nasty bug bite on her leg.  This is only a little unusual, as bugs seem to find her especially tasty.  This bite was a doozy, though, and more inflamed than anything else we’ve seen.  We kept an eye on it…

Friday morning we checked her… the bite on her leg was looking really awful.  It almost looked like it was blistering up and weeping.  AND there was another bite that looked like the beginnings of the same thing on her arm. 

That was enough for me, and I prepared to take her to the doctor. 

Oh, yeah…  WHAT doctor? 

We’re new here, and don’t know any doctors…

I started by trying to find someone on our health plan.  This is a somewhat tedious process when you’re feeling the urgency.  I look at the online directory and find a provider I think I’d like to see.  Then I call the PLAN office, who calls to verify that the doc in question is still accepting the plan, and accepting new patients.  Then the plan gives me the docs phone number, and I can call them…

Seems some doctors won’t see a new patient on a “crisis” basis.  You have to come in for a check up and “get acquainted visit” before they’re willing to squeeze you in for the urgent stuff.

Some doctors’ offices close at noon on Friday.

Some doctors, listed as “Family Practice,” actually only see patients ages fifteen and up!  Fifteen?!  I adored the family practice doc Nick and I saw when we lived in the Santa Monica, CA area when he was an infant.  “Family Practice” is supposed to mean that you see the whole family…

The local “Urgent Care” clinic had some very disturbing customer reviews posted online, so much so that we didn’t dare go there.

After exhausting all the appropriate docs within 20 miles or so on the plan, we called our landlords and asked for a recommendation.  Unfortunately, their doc, too, quits at noon on Friday…

I was almost ready to tear my hair out, and take her to the E.R. 

I HATE the E.R., I hate the wait…  and it was hardly an “emergency”…  But what was I supposed to do?

Luckily I got a flash of inspiration.  I went to the local La Leche League meeting last week, and still had the leader’s contact information on my desk…  I called her and asked for a recommendation.  After the careful disclaimer that she was “taking of her LLL hat”, she told me about the doc they went to on the infrequent occasions that they went at all.

I called Dr. Geraldi’s office, they were very kind, and agreed to see her that afternoon!  Yay!

By the time we arrived, the leg bite was dark and horrible looking, and the arm was starting to blister and weep.  I was horrified, and relieved that we had found a doctor at last.  Paying full price out-of-pocket for the visit suddenly didn’t seem like such a big deal.

He checked the bites, and agreed that it was something that needed treatment.  He thought it was probably a spider, although probably not a brown recluse (a reasonable fear, though, given the appearance).  After confirming that he only gives antibiotics when they are truly needed, he recommended one.

Relieved, we headed home…  well, to the pharmacy. 

On the way there, I bothered to actually read the prescription, and saw that he was giving her Augmentin.  Wow!  That’s not just your garden-variety antibiotic like Amoxycillin - that’s the “big guns” that they bring out  when they need a tough, broad-spectrum solution.  If he felt that was necessary, I’m more glad than ever that we went! 

And, of course, something like that (even the generic) is NOT on the list of “free” or “$4″ antibiotics that pharmacies are promoting like crazy these days…  So, although we saved a nice bit with our discount plan, it was still pretty pricey to get the oral antibiotic, as well as the topical ointment.

Finally heading home, I got the flash of insight.  I turned to Wolf and said, “I wonder if all my frustrated searching this morning was really just God closing doors.  (I did my “God is talking to you” voice)  ‘Stop worrying about the money.  Find a good doctor, and I will provide…’”

(P.S.  We got a lot of bug spray while were out, too, and Jewel is doing MUCH better now!)

Luckily, not us… But I just read an article that pointed out that we aren’t necessarily immune just because we homeschool.  In fact, let me share said article - see below.

Supermom’s products are really neat.  We’ve actually been using the peppermint-scented No Lice Spray on Jewel’s whole body at night to help keep the Tiny Bitey Things away - apparently they don’t like the smell any better than lice do! 

And the best news?  She’s having a Back-to-School sale!  Check out SuperMom’s Health and Wellness for all you ever wanted to know about lice (and probably a lot more!), and the products to fix it…

I was actually glad to discover her store for other reasons - her natural soap is delightful, and I’m excited about trying the flavoreed Stevia to make naturally sweet drinks!

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Homeschooling is particularly wonderful for getting to spare one’s children many of the things we ourselves may have disliked in our own school experiences, such as lots of homework, bullies, and lunchroom food. However, one old standby that we can’t avoid even as homeschoolers is the threat of head lice.

Head lice are small insects that live off of human blood. Head lice do not fly or hop, but they are accomplished travelers, crawling all over the universe looking for hospitable heads on which to live. Head lice can easily be gotten from church, mission trips, outreach opportunities, spending time with friends, and at any activity that children attend. Even if you home church and home school, your children can get lice! If you don’t know what to do when it happens, it can be a long and costly battle until you finally see the end of it.

Like most parents, I always hoped my children would not get head lice. I had no plan except that I knew I would never use chemical lice shampoos on my children. These products are pesticides that are unsafe for use, particularly for pregnant women and children under two. Being a mother of six, I have spent quite a few years either pregnant or with babies and toddlers…or both! Due to the fact that head lice bite the scalp to live, when we use pesticide products on our children we are introducing these chemicals directly into their bloodstream via the open sores on their head. That combined with the fact that our skin absorbs everything we put on it was enough to let me know I had to find a safe alternative.

A few years ago I discovered head lice on my children. I was horrified! My youngest little boys got their heads shaved immediately since they had quite an infestation and I knew that they would have a hard time sitting still for multiple rounds of combing out nits.

For the older children I first tried home remedies such as olive oil and vinegar. We found both options messy, illogical, and ineffective. I realized that the bottom line was that all the live lice and eggs have to come out of the hair. A fairly simple goal! An online contact told me about a battery-powered lice comb called the Robi Comb, so I bought one and went to work.

The Robi Comb actually electrocutes lice as you comb through the hair and they get stuck in it’s teeth. We were amazed at the amount of lice we found, and how tiny and nearly transparent some of them were. Newly hatched lice are almost impossible to see, so we were very glad our Robi Comb could catch them. We followed up with a metal egg comb to get out all the eggs, and just repeated this process again and again until we were confident that all the lice were gone.

Once we were through with the Great head Lice Battle of 2004 I did some thinking and some research. I knew that I never wanted my children to get lice again, and I wondered if there was anything safe that I could use to help prevent it. Sure enough, I found that the wonderful world of herbs offers many choices for this purpose. I started tinkering around with a formulation until I finally had a product that smelled great, didn’t irritate the skin, wasn’t oily, and worked well. My husband and I eventually got started selling our Supermom’s No-Lice Hair and Body Spray in 2005 and we have been so glad to help other families find a way to prevent and eliminate head lice safely and effectively.

Author Bio:

Erica Johns is owner of Supermom’s No-Lice Advice http://nolice.blogspot.com, a business that is dedicated to helping families prevent and eliminate head lice safely and effectively. Erica is working toward becoming a Certified Natural Health Professional and also offers many more products to help families live healthier through Supermom’s Health and Wellness. Erica and her husband Dave have been married since 1991 and are the happy parents of 6 children.

I just read a disturbing post from Amber on her Homeschool Diva blog.  Apparently there’s a new drug out there that’s being foisted on girls as a vaccine against cervical cancer, which has not been adequately tested (and the results of the tests that were done are alarming!).

I’ll copy the main text of the article, then continue below with my thoughts…

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[Amber] received this updated research article from [her] fab doc Dr. Erika Schwartz.

“The public interest group Judicial Watch has just reported 371 serious adverse events in patients who received Merck’s cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil, including three deaths.

You may remember I exposed this HPV vaccine earlier this year as “an act of aggression against our daughters who are becoming victims of pharmaceutical greed.”

In February I wrote: “The HPV vaccine has only been tested for five years on possibly as low as 100,000 ten year old girls in Africa. No one knows what will happen to those girls or our girls in the five, 10 or 20 years after the vaccine has been administered.The only science here is the real live testing about to be done on our daughters, who are technically, like the African ten year olds, the guinea pigs. Remember Lyme vaccine? What happened to that cure-all? It killed a few people and was quickly taken off the market.”

Merck invested hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying and marketing the drug and almost persuaded Texas and some other states to mandate its use on sixth-grade schoolgirls. Only a revolt by parents and community groups put a stop to this insanity.

As of May 11, 1,637 side effects were reported to the FDA through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the group said. Judicial Watch received the information through a Freedom of Information Act request. Approximately 77 percent of the adverse reactions were typical, including pain at the injection site, itching, fever, nausea and dizziness, the group noted.

However, one female patient died of a blood clot three hours after receiving the vaccine, the group said. A 19-year-old patient died of heart failure partially caused by large blood clots two weeks after getting the vaccine. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both patients were taking birth control pills, which can cause clotting. In addition, a 12-year-old patient died of heart complications six days after receiving Gardasil, according to the VAERS reports.

Eighteen of the 42 women who received Gardasil while pregnant experienced adverse side effects, ranging from spontaneous abortion to fetal abnormalities. Clinical trials used in the FDA’s review of Gardasil last year showed five cases of birth defects among women who received the vaccine within 30 days of conception. Gardasil is not recommended for pregnant women, according to the product’s label.

Merck recently submitted a supplemental biologic license application to the FDA to market Gardasil to prevent vaginal and vulvar cancers.”

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Lyme vaccine?  What about Thalidamide??

I know vaccines are a hot topic in parenting circles, anyway, and we each have to make the choices we think are best for even the “regular” childhood immunizations…

Do you really want to know? 

I had Nick vaccinated on the normal schedule, withthe inactive Pertussus component of the vaccine, since the standard one was shown to be the worst of the offenders at that time.  Although we had no horrible effects, I was troubled looking back at his baby book that we accept a kid being sick and miserable for a day or more with a disease we intentionally gave them!

I do think that some vaccinating is necessary for “the greater good.”  As more and more parents are choosing not to immunize their children, the country slides further from the safety of the “herd immunity” we had created, and even now outbreaks of these diseases are beginning to show up.  My latest research led us to choose a slightly different course for Jewel.  We do intend to immunize her, but we did not start at birth.  A child’s immune system develops largely over the first two years of life, so waiting until after that point gives them a chance to protect themselves from the vaccines’ onslaught and better avoid complications.  Time will tell…

Neither child had or will have the chicken pox vaccine, which I am still convinced is just plain silly.  Heck, it’s harder on kids than the childhood disease we all had!  Nick had chicken pox before it came out, so it was never an issue.  It may be with Jewel when she’s old enough to want to go to summer camp, but we’ll cross that bridge.

I let them drink out of the garden hose, too… 

I’m still trying to catch up with the sales and promotions that everyone’s offering in May - Wow!

May is AmeriPlan’s 15th Birthday, and the twin founders’ 65th Birthday, so naturally they’re offering presents:

- Pay ZERO for your first month!  Sign up for a Household Dental plan during May, and your first month is FREE (and depending on your billing cycle, this can actually be as much as 7 weeks!).  This gives you savings up to 80% on Dental, Vision, Prescription and Chiropractic services, with no limits, no deductibles, and no exclusions.  Their “household” is cool, too, because it includes anyone living with you - no limits on age or relationship like those insurance companies have - so it can be your married child, your cousin, your roommate, or anyone…  Visit www.LowCostDental4U.com.

- Of course they have great incentives for us reps this month, too…  And with the free month of benefits, it’s even easier to build up your business this month.  Check out TiffanyBlitz.com. 

May is also Tupperware’s birthday (did I miss the memo about starting a business in May?).  They have a ton of great specials going on for individual orders, for party hosts, and for consultants to earn, too.  Check out the sales at Tupperware Blitz if you’re so inclined.

Now if only the price of gas was discounted this month…  Being in California again makes me try to hoard every drop!