What I should be doing: Planning meals and shopping for the week.  Because the one thing I've found helps me cope and combat all the bad foods trying to invade my home is planning.  The enemy of good health is lack of time, and television.

What I am doing: Watching Oprah, who's doing some special on diabetes.  Some woman has no feet because she ignored diabetes until it was too late.  Doctor Oz just showed a pyramid of bags of sugar, then he took away half of it and said "That's how much sugar people were eating a generation ago"  We haven't quite doubled the average sugar intake, but it's getting close.  In one generation. 

My life is just too full at the moment to reply to everyone who has commented, or sent me private emails (Thanks Lionel, you gave me the best advise) regarding my last few posts.  So sorry I can't say thank you to everyone who has commented, but please please please please know that I have read each and every comment and knowing I have such great friends, many of whom feel the same way as me, has been a great inspiration in a week I have felt very very very alone.

I feel like I'm drowning in my desires to be better but Erron gave me some great advise which was to not try and change everything at once. Slowly eat our way through the food we've got and make changes as we can. Erron Anderson is my hero.  I stayed in her house in Saskatchewan for two weeks, recently, when they gave birth to their fourth child.  I figured they could use the help and I thought I was doing them a favour.  And perhaps I was, but really they helped me.  Almost everything in their house is organic and it was a wonder as I helped organize their pantry to think "I know what all this food is, but I don't recognize a single label"  Nevermind know how to cook any of it into a meal. 

I bought massive quantities of candy and ate that as snack food.  I told myself I was on vacation, and also I was definitely on a snack food kick.. I mean, I'm not like that every day, right?  Yeah, I tell myself a pack of lies.  Lies upon lies upon lies to justify whatever it is I happen to be doing at the moment.

Kyle Anderson recently told me how, at first, he wasn't that on board with his wife's push for organic food, cooking from scratch, blah blah blah, y'know, hippy bullshit [my words, not his;  seriously erron, don't be hatin' on Kyle].  But this was in the midst of the conversation where he was telling me about the pig pen he recently built because they're going to raise "bacon" from scratch.  Now, no matter what your politics, you have to admit that "bacon from scratch" is a worthy worthy goal.   But the point was, Kyle wasn't really that keen.. and now, by many people's standards, he's a crazy hippy.  Hell, by many people's standards, I'M a crazy hippy.. but it seems that everyone I actually know is doing far more than me to protect the environment, feed their families healthy, and all that hippy bullshit.  Kyle, you gave me hope.  Because right now Janine hasn't even read the book that changed my life, and Nathan's big thing, lately, is throwing huge massive 1 hour tantrums because... well, who knows... today it was because he couldn't figure out the belt buckles on his high chair.  After the fifth or sixth time he threw himself backwards onto our kitchen hardwood floor, cracking his skull, I moved him to the crib to calm down.  Then I went outside and drank half a beer and smoked a cigar.  then I calmly sat with him in a rocking chair and we tried to find the duck in one of his flip books.  also, the bottle, the cat, the chair, and especially that duck. 

Where was I?  Ah, who knows.  Editing is a luxury I'm going to give up on for today at least. 
Kyle.  Kyle told me how he wasn't that on-board but, like a lot of husbands (especially me), y'know, he's only going to resist his wife so much.  And now he's building pig pens.  He's my hero.  The hope he gave me is that maybe one day my wife will see things the way i do.

Erron.  Erron pushed for change not because she wanted to save the entire world, just her family.  She thought it was what was necessary and she pushed for the change she wanted.  Maybe one day I'll be as brave as her.

Me.  I don't know where I am.  Nathan's going to wake up soon and then I'll have to figure out our meals for the week, and shop for groceries, and wonder if I'm just alienating my readers.  But unlike BSG, I can't pretend to be an expert.  But maybe I can offer up some value by just sharing my journey to being a better cook, a better father, maybe even a better person.

Oprah.  She's still talking about how people are going to die if they don't change their diets.  "If you consume one can of soda a day, you're risk for developing type 2 diabetes increases by 83% a day"  (doctor oz via oprah)  There really is a food revolution going on right now.  And somewhere, somebody unsubscribed to me because I'm talking about a boring shit.  ("as for noncaloric sweeteners such as aspartame or Splenda, research (in both humans and animals) suggests that switching to artificial sweeteners does not lead to weight lost ... it may be that deceiving the brain with the reward of sweetness stimulates a craving for even more sweetness" ~ Michael Pollan/Food Rules)

I never read the food labels either, because it's just way way to much to deal with.  I believe I've gone a bit crazy at the moment (although I'm better than last week) because on top of everything else I deal with daily the support network I had of "you can buy food at a grocery store" has been upended and I feel quite adrift.  But today I ate homemade whole wheat bread (from a bread machine).  I gave up trying to find whole wheat bread flour that didn't have weird chemicals listed in the ingredients (I'll try non-bread whole wheat bread flour instead in the next day or two).  I eat bread & peanut butter & coffee about 75% of mornings and that's where I'm starting.

Maybe I never raise my own pigs, but I am making my own bread.  Perhaps my wife and son are unsupportive or indifferent, but *I* can eat my own bread.  It's a small stupid goal.  What's the point of making your own bread, after all?  It's because *I* can do it.  It's a change I can make, and I _am_ making that change.  See I read the ingredients on the 100% whole wheat 800 million grain bread, and it was full of sugar/fructose-glucose and ingredients I couldn't pronounce.  And even Oprah is on my side.

Well, Nathan just woke up, he's yelling "yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah" repeatedly.  Maybe he's going to be in a good mood this afternoon (that'd be nice).  And Janine just phoned me with hints about what she's going to do for our wedding anniversary this thursday.  And it's time to wrap up this and post it.  Now Nathan's screaming.  Until next time....