The Value of Community

To me the values I cherish most reflect the community in which I live. Sadly this much needed aspect of life has diminished in recent times. Here in my street I no longer know the names of my near neighbours. Most live insular lives and perhaps I do too. When my mother moved into this suburb in the 1960s, she knew almost everyone who lived in this part of the street. They were in most part friends and would have wonderful parties in each others homes. Now people scurry indoors when anyione approaches. People worry about protecting their property and see everyone as a threat.
This is why I value community so much. Being older means I no longer have the community connections that come from having children living at home. Schools, P&C meeting, gym clubs, etc are all a wonderful way to meet people. Being in the 'aged' catagory can be very isolating in itself.
Lately I have been having trouble hearing. Instead of getting sympathetic responses, I am usually met with impatience. This morning I did not understand what my daughter was saying on the phone. After making several attempts to guess what she was saying, she responded with an "oh mother" statement. This has the effect of making me feel less than valued. I want to laugh that I mis-hear, while not stictly funny, I don't want it to be serious either. After this, I want to scream. Not hearing well is making me an outsider in my group.
One thing I love in the Age of Technology is the way I can link with like minded people all over the world, while sitting at my keyboard. I like having 'friends' in far away places. I value their wisdom, sense of place and above all their friendship.
As one gets older, one loses touch with so many people. No one replaces them and I cling to my family to try to retain my sense of self. Perth is one of the fasted growing cities in Australia. The place I grew up in is hardly recognisable to me anymore and my neighbours are likely to be of a different ethnic origin. Sometime I don't even feel Australian. Western Australia has a desert, the Nullabour Plain, separating us from the Eastern States. There they look out across the Pacific to other Rim countries like the United States and Japan. Here on the Indian Ocean, we are almost as close to Asia as we are to Sydney. It seems as though our Prime Minister often forget this too. After the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2003, he, John Howard sent a message of condolence to the Indian Ocean nations containing this remarkable statement, " I send my deepest sympathies to these countries, while we are not an Indian Ocean nation..." Where the heck does he think we are? How can the leader of the country forget about us here in the West?
Age may bring many rewards, but for me I am increasingly finding it isolating. I am no longer linked to my community by work or play. I find it hard to understand those I love and I feel devalued when I am scolded for not understanding .
So, as I mentioned earlier. I thank all my friends on the cyber highway. Those who respond to my often very silly posts. People in diverse places like Jane in the UK and Robert and Laurie in the US. These people who are linked by the power of words, lifestyles and beliefs now form my community. I shall never meet most and to me that is not as important as just knowing that they care and offer their support, friendship and love.
Thank you one and all, Jocelyn

Eat to Live = Nutrient Dense Foods

The foods featured in this eating plan are unrefined, nutrient dense foods that contain maximun nutrients per calorie. Foods such as leafy greens, vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts and seeds are the backbone of this way of eating. Other foods such as dairy, meat, fats salts and sugar are discarded or allowed in limited quantities only.

Eating for health, rather than for fun is something I needed to work on. While I may love to eat certain foods such as icecreams, cakes, chocolates and hot chips, the aftermath of eating these foods is quite frankly, not worth the discomfort.

Asthma, headaches/migraines, obesity, lethagy, depression are all made worse by a bad diet. Now having changed my basic foods, I find I get fewer bouts of depression and headaches. Dairy was always a trigger for my breathing difficulties and I can only eat these products in limited quantities, if at all.

Luckily for me I changed to a vegetarian diet over 20 years ago. This was funny because I had always been a big meat eater and a avoided vegetables at all cost. How things have changed. I now love green veggies and cannot tolerate the smell of meat cooking. Just contemplating eating the greasy flesh makes my stomach churn.

Fruit is by far my favourite food ever. I love it fresh and raw. The only fruit that's improved by cooking, in my opinion are apples, laden with spices. Cooked in this way, they are a taste of Heaven on Earth.

Beans presented a much bigger problem. After following a raw food diet for some time, I could not get my head around eating large quantities of beans. But time and practise helps with all things. Now I quite look forward to a plate of bean stew, or soup. Given that the weather has been cold here lately, beans have played an important part in my diet. As the days get warmer, I guess I will eat more salads. My favourite salad features avocado and is topped with grilled portobello mushrooms. this was my one big cheat when I was a raw fooder. No matter what the weather was like, I would always feel warm and cheered after eating this combination. Other bean products like as tofu and soy milk, are ok in limited amounts.

The huge amounts of leafy greens required on this diet is rather alarming. I mean, how can I eat a pound of cooked greens as well as a pound of raw ones? I would have to hire an extra stomach from somewhere, lol. Nevertheless, I continue to try to reach at least part of that total.

Nuts and seeds, needed for the goodness of their omega 3 fatty acids, are something I struggle with. Even soaked, they still present problems with my digestion. One thing I have noticed with being Seriously Sixty, is that I cannot take the liberties with food that I once took. I am prone to constipation and I have to be somewhat careful when it comes to eating large quantities of nuts.

This plan also realises that we live in the real world, where copious amounts of food is ever present and much of it is great tasting junk. So allowing 10% of total daily foods to come from non-recommended sources, makes life interesting. Most of the time I don't want the built in cheat, but it is nice to be able to indulge in my own addiction, peanut butter. Sometimes I add in some brown rice to my dishes, but only 1/2 a cupful at a time. This adds the fibre I need to help my sluggish digestion.

I wonder if I am alone in this, but I think, study, read so much about food and I spend very little time in actually eating it. Now that really is food for thought.

* Includes other non-starchy vegetables like tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms etc.

Wow How Did This Happen

The other morning I woke up and looked in the mirror. Looking back at me was this older woman who was definitely in her 60's. She seemed as puzzled as I did about the whole situation. I asked her what she was doing there in my mirror, but she just frowned at me.

Ok so I know that at age 66 I have been in my 60s for some time. But not seriously sixty looking.I guess it comes to all of us at one time or another, but I have managed to tell myself that I am doing so much better than everybody else and that the results show. After all, I continually edit my lifestyle and try to keep refining and improving my diet and I somehow expected the results to show on the outside, hence my bewilderment on looking in the mirror that morning.

I will freely admit that I have wild hair and now it desperately needs cutting. I am also thankful that I bought some new make-up the day before. Now if I could just remember where I put it.... only joking I tossed it on the floor when I went to bed that night. Not that I am untidy, I just try to live in one room in my sisters house. The rest of the house is very small and overfilled with her possesions. I think the term "overfilled" is nicer than saying it is cluttered. Now of course my bedroom is too.

I share my room with my companion, Inkypuss, who some people unkinder than me, might call a cat. She is grey, dignified and feisty and has bitten me more times than I can remember. But we co-exist and each has grudging respect of the other.

Recently I changed my diet from vegan raw foods, to an Eat To Live one. This lifestyle is championed and perfected by Dr Joel Fuhrman from New Jersey. He is one of the few physicians who treat medical conditions by nutritional excellence and movement, rather than using drugs. It's still vegan though. When I first read the e-book I thought that it was just a raw diet with a few cooked dishes tossed in to make it saleable to the mass market. Now over two months later, I realise he has tweaked it to give even better results than a pure raw food one. I know rawfoodists will never agree with me, but I like it.

Anyway that is enough of an introduction, apart from adding that I am a hopeless Blogger and mine always look amateurish when compared to the ones my grandaughter Jacquie creates. Oh By the way,
Happy 15th Birthday Jax!