Living-Deliberately.com

I finished yesterday and much of my sentiments from the first half remain, albeit sadly. It’s best summed up with the publisher’s description in the jacket:

“Happily married and the mother of ten, Kathryn Sansone is centered, fit, organized, and beautiful. But Supermom? Absolutely not….”

Written from the vantage point of publishing execs, who, if they are women, do not stay at home (!!) I can see why they’d look on this author with admiration. She *is* beautiful. And she’s very considerate and respectful of her husband so I’m sure she’s happily married. She’s obviously fit and organized to the nth degree.

But having read the book, I think she’s more self-centered than centered in general and I won’t be joining her club, as the quote goes on to petition.

Early on she has an insert about the contrast of moms who work outside the home and those who stay at home. Whether or not it’s best of the kids, she thinks that this choice is all about what make the woman happy. Hence the title I supose. She also says that there is equality in work and stress levels for both.

I didn’t get that. I think working women have it much, much harder. They have to juggle more balls and look good doing it. They must spend a good deal of time feeling torn about how much effort each area gets. When someone gets sick, they can’t just have a “jammie day”. No, I didn’t get that.

But then she describes her days. 8 hours in the car…in traffic! Multiple kids in sports plus her own. By her own admission she doesn’t “stay at home” much and that’s very clear. There’s just not enough hours in the day. With the way she juggles things I can see how relating to someone who works outside the home would be applicable.

As I did yesterday, I still don’t think there’s much I could apply. David said, “she’s not very immitatable, is she?” And how. She’s the uber-soccer mom, Stepfordish suburbanite, shopping often, cooking with gourmet foods, and decorating ala the pottery barn catalog. Yes, I admit to strong envy hearing her describe her mud room, where each child has a cubbie with thier photo, seasonal sports equiptment, and daily needs all neatly hung in a row!

That doesn’t make that beautiful system a “word of wisdom I can use in my down times”. Sigh.

I’m kind of sorry she’s put herself out there. No one, or at least not I, would have critiqued her way of doing things if it wasn’t out in print, encouraging me to apply her “wisdom”. She lives with alot of people and out of necessity manages them. For thier lifestyle, I’m sure she does a “good” job. It’s just not how enough of society can emmulate to make it worth pages and a binding.

What saddened my spirit most was something in the end, when she’s talking about how the kids go down for the night: “I never sat in a room with a child and rocked them to sleep.”

I think Kathryn Sansone has missed out on a whole dynamic of mothering entirely.

C. in the dining room right now painting and playing, “Bob Ross”….

in her deepest voice, “let’s come in here with a little blue and dab that….let’s just have some fun. Wipe your brush and come in and help that happy little tree…”

Gotta love it….

I’ve noticed that lately I’ve had a growing sensitivity about choices women make with selfishness at the core. I guess it’s always been around; for whatever reason my senses have a heightened awareness these days.

I guess I should start by saying I operate from a mindset that doesn’t think all choices are equal. Some really ARE better than others. If you have choice A and choice B and choice A has research behind it that shows it has benefits that choice B doesn’t have, that doesn’t necessarily make choice B “bad”…but it does still mean that choice A was better.

And, I can be an incredibly selfish person sometimes. Just ask anyone who’s lived with me and heard me rant about “needing my space”. So for a long time I’ve kept my trap shut on the issue because there is indeed a log in my eye.

Then I saw this book:

In the interest of full disclosure I’ll admit that I haven’t finished it yet. So may there’s still hope for me to glean something useful from it.

I was in the grocery store when I saw it, picking up a jug of OJ that I suddenly had to have on ice. The book had a 40% discount attatched; the cover photo shows her beautuful 10 kids. I”m a sucker for big families and the women who run them so I picked it up.

Besides, though I’m suposed to be reading Northanger Abbey right now, it hasn’t been holding my interest well and I wanted something light on my day off yesterday. I was hoping this read would be encouraging.

The author, Kathryn Sansone, was discovered by Oprah one day, while answering a question on fitness. At the time she was pregnant with her 9th baby and still doing her weight training regiment. Since then, she’s been in O Magazine, had several other interviews, and is on a special forum of women assembled by AOL. The book is her tips for “doing it all”. She makes several reminders that she is not perfect but that she is doing her best. Good so far.

And then….well a distance starts to form between her and her reader (me). I start realizing that she is undoubtedly upper middle class and white and her adivice isn’t that applicable to the majority of women I know, see, or could possibly relate to. Her central point is that you have to take care of yourself, be a good and strong woman *first* before you can be the best for your family. Point taken. We all need to nurture ourselves and a happy mom means a better mom.

Halfway through the book though and I realize her children seem to be a part of less and less of her day as we go along. For starters, she doesn’t homeschool them; they go to a parochial school. Not a block there. I don’t think everyone should homeschool thier kids and using a good system doesn’t necessarily mean the parent is abdicating thier resposibilty to educate thier children. But the thought did come to mind when she says, “yes, I am doing it all”.

She’s an admitted type-A personality and goes into the importance of making lists and planning the day. Getting enough rest (she naps in carpool lines and doctor waiting rooms–yikes!). She plays comptetive tennis and volleyball. Gets her hair cut and colored regularly, fingers and toes done monthly. Works out 4 times a week. Gets regular dates with her dashing hubby, little coffee breaks, occassional trips sans kiddos into Chicago, is on several boards and committees. OH, she’s also a personal trainer and serves on that AOL forum. And she wrote a book.

Halfway through the book I’ve heard LOTS about her and very little about how she acutally manages and parents 10 children.

She’s almost lost me with this one though…. “When I tell people I have never nursed a baby, they are frequently surprised….What’s best for me has always been feeding my babies formula from a bottle. This way my husband and older kids can feed the baby, I get back into the swing of things more quickly……”

There’s that pesky “choice A” and “choice B”. “What’s best for me??!” (emphasis mine). If nursing were just about mom, I guess I could go with that. What about what is best for baby though? It seems absurd to go into the extent of research that proves breastfeeding is better than formula. Maybe a little more helpful to point out that baby formula is one of the highest offenders with MSG; definately NOT “Just as healthy” as Kathryn would like to beleive. Formula has it’s place for certain; not everyone CAN nurse.

But my biggest beef is both the motivation behind the choice “it’s all about what’s best for mom” and the contention that after having a baby, part of “getting back into the swing” includes that baby! Your swing pre-baby isn’t SUPOSED to look like your swing post-baby. It’s doesn’t look likes she’s “doing it all” to me. I’m still operating under the (mis)conception that motherhood often means “others first”. Isn’t that one of the great beauties of motherhood? Or heck, of simple “progagation of the species”? You put the child’s need before your own OFTEN. That doesn’t mean you neglect yourself but “self” isnt’ the core of the decision process.
The question that lingers is, “what happens when one of those 10 break rank?” What if one to come is born with Down’s or someone gets really sick or what about just ordinary teenage rebellion? When it’s all not so easy to “manage” while wearing a tennis skirt with manicured nails?

So, we’ll see. I still have half of the section on marriage and then the end, which is suposed to actually be about the kids to go. I may still find something of merit in there, something to make this purchase worthwhile. So far though, her “all choices are equal; do what’s best for YOU” mantra isn’t resonating.

For more on my thoughts of this book:

part 2 of the book review

a contrast: Michelle Duggar does “big family mothering” in a different way

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• I got to the bank 2 mintues before they closed!
• when I got to said bank, the teller asked me how I’d gotten settled in. A little puzzled, I told her great. She then asked me if I liked it better here than in Florida! She’s remembered me from 7 months ago when I opened my account! Amazing!
• When I googled my church’s name to post a link here it didn’t come up on the first page of hits….BUT MY SITE DID!!!
• a friend of mine here has said he can put me in touch with an editor of one of the papers here. A regular food article may soon be one of my dreams come true!

We’re having a rampant measure of progress ’round these parts and over the next few days some of it will become evident here on my blog. Some of you know I’ve been planning to start a menu service that encourages not just women with thier meal planning but also those living on a tight budget with the baby steps of the Total Money Makeover. That’s finally finding it’s feet and rather than spread myself too thin over too many websites, I’ve decided to sort of combine it with my writing here. The menus come in newsletter form and can be subscribed through beansandricemealplan@yahoogroups.com. Eventually this will also include it’s own site and forum but this is a good start for now. Hopefully there will soon be a direct link from here to the subscription site.

Traffic here has quite frankly blown me off my feet. I had no idea I had so many readers. There’s this cool function my host offers that lets me see how many different users there are, how many hits, what time of day they come, where they are from…it’s amazing to me how many international hits there are! And what’s especially cool to me is that I’m told getting “fully spidered” through google usually takes up to a year and yet this site has achieved it in just a month!

I’m working on reorganizing and cleaning house a bit to make things a little easier to find. Some of the deeply personal details will be have to be scaled back a bit too. But at it’s essence, my blog will be it’s same old self; a place for me to share what I’m thinking and viewing and experiencing, and hopefully taking a bunch of you with me on the ride.

or best as I can translate

For the dough:

1 packet fast-rise yeast

about a cup or so of warm water

a T. of sugar

let that get foamy. Then add:

1 T. or so of olive oil

1.5 c flour

some garlic powder, salt (a t. of each?)

Stir to make a runny dough. Add in enough flour until it’s workable, then work it until it’s smooth and elastic (but still fairly soft; getting it too far makes it tough).

Sprinkle a little cornmeal on a baking sheet (used to love my stone but it broke last week). Use olive oil on your fingers and press it out to make a pie.

Sprinkle fairly liberally with olive oil (make dimples in the dough for it to sink into like puddles).

salt and pepper. add herbs (rosemary is good or basil!)

Top it. Sliced tomato, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, veggies, whatever. It’s not pizza though. Keep it sparse. Sprinkle a cheese like feta or parmesean or little dots of fresh mozerella.

Bake it until golden and puffed. I prefer this on the grill but ours isn’t up and running yet and the oven worked fine yesterday.

And this is EXCELLENT with a leafy green salad with a vinegrette dressing!

Gotta love it. The day before groceries is always a little grim. I’m not exactly sure why, but for some reason, after a day of shopping and cleaning, I feel like Super Woman. Or is that Wonder Woman? Remember Under-roos? Mine were Wonder Woman…

I get the house cleaned the pantry full, a clean fridge brimming with yellow cheeses, white jugs of milk, green and leafy lettuce and I just feel like I could lasso a plane….

Anyway….the day before is not so exciting. My friends call is CORD (clean out refridge day). Tonight’s dinner will be a not so marvelous CORD suppper: sauted sugar peas, baked potatoes, maybe some onion soup. Lunch was looking dreary but MAN! SCORE!

I had some yeast and the stuff for pizza dough but no cheese for a traditional pie. I decided a pan of foccacia would be nice…I made the dough and found a foil packet with last night’s leftover roasted leeks and beets. Olive oil, herbs, the veggies and some fresh parmesean…things were looking up.

It baked up perfectly. Sometimes the crust is a tough, cakey mess but today it was wonderfully chewy and yeasty and crisp on the outside. The bread was soft and it was FABULOUS. I sat down and read a few pages of this month’s O magazine.

There was a really good article on the feeling of fear versus the actual threat. Another good article on long term weight loss success, how hard it is, how encompassing, how it forces you to think of what you are a thin person versus a heavier one. And then, turn the page, and it’s an article on FOCCACIA!!

The picture was my lunch :D. The recipe was my lunch YUM. Oprah serves my lunch at her dinner parties. Her chef calls it “a little black dress”.

How cheesy is it that I found a tiny bit of validation and confidence from my meal + magazine experience? I sorta feel…..strong….

• David has developed the most bizarre snore that he can accomplish while lying in any position. Instead of mouth breathing and making that rattle/whistle sound, he forces all the air to go aggressively through is nose. It’s wierd. I still nudge him though and make him change position to alleviate it. Somewhere in the middle of the night I bumped his shoulder:

me: “Hey! You’re snoring. Roll over.”

him: “Huh? I didn’t hear anything.”

Well duh…. he was asleep.

• The Cream of Wheat this morning was made with frozen chunks of mango instead of peaches or berries. Wheaton happily stirred his, singing about his “cream of wheat and bongos”

• seeing C doing her version of a spiral while reaching back and holding her blade and then later making a new friend at the rink. She’s dreaming of skating and longing for a cute little skirt and tights. Watch out when the Olympics start!
• seeing W run across the yard, with the sunshine behind him and lighting his  hair up like a halo. It’s cold and clear here today and the leaves are all sparkly in the sun.
• finding a Krispy Kreme on the way home from the rink, to visit on a better day. It’s nice to know just where one is! I didn’t think there was one in this area.
• seeing fat baby play peek-a-boo
• hearing from my dad today
• getting the very cool hat prototype from Mom for elicoricity. So cool!
• encouraging comments on the previous post.  I don’t blog so that I can hear feed back but some days, it just nice to see it there. Thanks!

For several months I’ve been retooling how we handle our money. With the discovery of Dave Ramsey, we’ve stopped the cycle of debt, learned to spend with cash, and spend less than we make. Those used to be “catch phrases” casually tossed around. Now I know the real, hard, practical impact they can have.

I think one large hurtle I had to get over was that our overspending was never for the fluffy luxury stuff one commonly thinks of when considering credit card debt. I know alot of people will say that but in our case at least, it’s true. I have, perhaps, had too much of a martyr complex in this area. We’ve just never made a lot of money, reguardless of effort or promotions. In the old days, it was almost as if the attitude was, “you should just be grateful for what we give you”, as if earning it never came into play. I was told over and over again that the pay was “good”, even though it never matched up to personal or online comparisons of job responsiblity and salary. What *was* good was the benefit package. And occassional perks did come along now and then. But for the most part, allowing a little for inflation, we’ve made the same as we ever did, before we were a “we” and dh was in the navy.

And here? Well, it’s a whole new ball game. Apparently, the sales field has alot of variances. Base pay or not (we do get a small one). Commissions and percentages. And then there’s this pesky hidden detail of how one actually is to earn commissions when the structure seems poised against that actually happening. It’s a different world to be sure….dh hasn’t taken a lunch break in 7 months. He works hard to grow customers who like him and want to be loyal to him but can get a better deal almost anywhere else, so it makes it hard for them to actually use him. Keeping a self-tally of where the “numbers” are each month works only until it’s compared with what the office says, which is supiciously all over the place. The bottom line is, allowing nothing for inflation, we make less than we did 11 years ago, before we were a “we” and without the second job, would have no benefits to boot.

Hmmm. We aren’t suposed to long for wealth or love money. And, if one works hard, they can expect to see a return for the effort, whereas if they see nothing, it can be assumed they sit and loaf on thier derrier. We made this move, in part, to see some radical improvement. I have to admit my attitude is waning.

I listen to Dave Ramsey’s show every day. I really do get sick of hearing people whimper that they can’t “make” it on 80k or 60k or even 40k. Dave R says the average family makes 40 and that less than that is just really, really hard. No kidding. He gets really dubious that it can work on less than that, and downright quiet when there are kids involved.

I wonder what he would say if he saw our numbers.

Today I checked the federal poverty level guidelines. I knew we’d hovered around the number for several years. The census bereau updates it yearly; the 2004 numbers say that a family of 6 should be earning at least 25, 210. Maybe, just maybe, with three sources of income, we’ll touch that this year.

I can’t hear Dave. I bet he doesn’t have alot of hope for us.

And yet….our goal this year is to double our income. Conventional wisdom says that with enough blood, sweat, and tears (and oh yeah…dh is also very, very faithful, committed, talented, good with customers, motivated, experienced, and can do a variety of things) that we should be able to make it. On dark days, I wonder if that’s just urban legend. I want to see something for our effort; I want to meet someone who says, “look, we did it too”.

And so we’ve had our trip to the library. I sat and read the first chapter of Northanger Abbey in a sun-drenched window seat while C played with baby in the “frog pond”. A sat beside me and read a chapter of a Hardy Boys mystery, leading the realization of a much-longed for dream come true: reading silently together with my child.

From there we headed out to the beloved Greenbelt, though it was a mite too cold without coats. It was irrisistable though, with the contrast of bright light, deep shade, and freshness everywhere. The trees of course are very bare (is there anything that depicts a barren sadness better than a willow tree in winter?) but the sun reflected off the white sycamore bark, making them quite shine. The grass is popping up with bright springness everywhere; makes me wonder what it will do should there be a snow to come.

The kids climed trees and skipped stones….”Hey Mum! Mine skipped three!” My ears burned with cold and the baby laughed and the birds sang. The sky was that vivid robin’s egg blue with big, puffy clouds that had enough tinge of darkness to remind me that more rain would be here by week’s end.

We’ve had warm cookies and read books; the next to read aloud is Bed-Knobs and Broomsticks.  We’ve had news on the job that is both heart-breaking and prayer-answering all at once; direction is always good even if it isn’t what we hoped for. The day isn’t over; there is stew to make and lessons to go to, but enough words for today.

Oh beautiful orb, how I”ve missed you!!! I watched my old sentimental favorite, Singles, which takes place in  Seattle. I observed the joy on a child’s face at the seemingly endless chance to indulge in splashing in a mud puddle. I noted the stark brightness of a cardinal on a bare and dripping branch against a grey sky. I meditated on the greater depth of tones and hues in an otherwise hurredly descirbed “greyness”. But I’m a wee bit over it and ready for some BLUE sky, YELLOW sunshine, tender GREEN shoots from the bulbs…

Which, is not to say, I”m hankering over Florida’s current warmth. Turning on my AC in January would have had me in a stewed knot.

It’s just a lazy tuesday here today. W is going around singing “Stand up Oh God, be present now” and wobbling a red pillow on his head. Every now and again he reminds me he’s a woodpecker and demonstrates his “pick, pick, pick”. A is at the table doing grammar and vocabulary, growling over using the words, “fragrant, absorb, and trample”. C is in her room doing phonics quietly and in relative peace. No one’s dressed yet but that will soon change; today we are headed to the library.

Breakfast fajitas were on the menu for breakfast but as we had regular fajitas for dinner last night, I switched to waffles. My waffles have been a bit blighted lately, sticking to the iron or turning out tough. I think I’ve solved it with a about a tablespoon of oil added the batter and a bit more buttermilk. That batter shouldn’t be runny but a dry waffle seems to stick more than a more moist one. It throws me to have “off” waffles or burned food…something I’m doing more of lately. I feel like Stella needs to get her groove back….

W has added a wooden spoon to his red pillow head and is now a warrior.

I dreamt in “blog” last night, woke and thought to myself that I should get up and jot down a few notes, figured that I wouldn’t think it such a great post in daylight, and went back to sleep. This morning I have no idea what it was about.

On the to do list: at the library get Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen, to try to read quickly through for a book discussion next week. When Metropolis and I, Robot come in from Netflix, watch and do a comparison/contrast analysis for a film discussion with the same group of friends. Enter the subject plan for this semester on the homeschooling site I’m a member of, for grade reporting later. Decide what curriculum I need to purchas this spring, and also do a clothing inventory, so I can set those funds aside from the tax return. Read to the kids and finish the math books to the point where I”m okay with pitching them when we’re done. Soak the beans for dinner. Take A to violin lesson today and ice skating tomorrow.

And, if the sun shines upon us for more than one day, lay in it. Bask in it. Drink it in and feel it soak into my pores. Chances are, rain will be back for the weekend.

This was the kind of week that reminds me why I homeschool. For whatever cosmic sychronicity of events has descended upon our modest and crooked little house in the middle of town, the children actually got along. They practiced cursive with cooperativeness, nay even delight. They spent hours playing in yard, almost drunk with sunshine and pseudo-spring air. We finished up old math work books with thier remnants of equations and word problems and spent hours cuddled on the couch listening to me read. Thier faces, yes, even the nine-year old’s typically dubious expression changed to wonder at the illustrations in the book I was reading. Has it really been years since I saw that light in his eye? I consider actually suceeding at sitting down and reading a fairy story to them one of the greatest highlights of my week. Because no matter what homeschoolers say, accomplishing a cozy read-aloud with many children and a busy lifestyle can be a rare and difficult occurance.

The books is E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It. I can’t beleive I wasn’t familiar with it before! It caught my eye at the library this week and I grabbed it in total haste. It’s an enchanting story and a good one for doing a variety of voices. It has a good mix of the kind of logic children use and the moral lessons they eventually have to learn, with a spoonful of sugar for the delivery. And, I’ve just discovered there are two movie versions out, one with Freddie Highmore, so can anyone say, “comparison and contrast” coming our way?

Also this week, on friday to be exact, we did the bravewriterlifestyle’s “friday freewrite”, which was to create your own animal and write about it. Here’s a smattering:

A: The Poison tale is a highly dangerous dragon. It is a meat eater and it walks on three legs. It has two sets of fore arms. It weakens it’s prey by bashing it’s tail of poisonous prongs on it’s prey.

The accompaning picture shows a red and brown striped dragon with a spiked tail and red antlers. Verbal description went on to describe it’s life in a dry, desert-type atmoshere.

C: A Herentia (her-en-tee-ah) is an animal that swims in swamps. It can only see in red and it eats snakes and crocadile’s teeth. It sleeps in summer and awakens in fall and stays that way until summer. It is red and green and blue. It doesn’t have teeth; it swallows.

The picture shows a porcupine looking bird with cat ears and a beak and rolling eyes.

In tea time we are reading through Shel Silverstien’s Where the Sidewalk Ends… poetry that makes them laugh and completely listen with rapt attention.

And, meet Shelley, or a picture as close to the real thing as I could obtain.

A. found him in the creek in the back yard. After taking a walk to me across the bed room carpet (eewwwwww) he was not so ceremoniously deposited outside, where A & W built him a habitat, tried to teach him not to climb out, got the Nature’s Book out and identified him, learning about what he eats and how he lives. Oh, and that after handling turtles one ALWAYS washes thier hands…..

This is Grey Tree, by Piet Mondrian, discovered this morning on my friend’s blog (see musings of a middle aged woman in the sidebar). Jeanette is all the time introducing me to new art and this one totally took my breath away. There’s little in our current landscape that would inspire a work like this but when I gaze at this picture I can feel a cold windowpane. I can feel my nose get cold and see my breath hang on the air. I can hear the crunch of ice beneath my feet and the warm sweat under my arms beneath layers of warm clothing. I remember I should have worn a hat and note that my hair feels cold, when hair is dead and isn’t suposed to feel. I hear a far off bird and note the stillness of the field, the barren blue-greyness of the sky. Winter in all it’s sleeping glory.

Apparently this compute likes to have it’s buttons stroked. After hours of trying to get the thing to admit it had a power source, I sat running my fingers over the external buttons on the CPU, trying to figure out how we were going to get two new businesses up and running without a computer, when AHA! On the lights came and the little beast woke up.

So , here I am, typing what occurred to me while I was driving to Knoxville today, taking Celia over to a friend’s home. Earlier in the morning my friend Jennifer and I were talking about the evils of grammar lessons and diagraming sentences. We were trying to figure out what possible purpose such a break down could have and pretty much came to the conclusion that avid readers didn’t need to have that kind of painstaking analytical reduction. We know what something is “about”.

And then, we compared our reading histories. We both love to read and both cut our teeth on serial fiction…Sweet Valley High, Nancy Drew Mysteries, etc. This is on the forefront of our minds here at the Graham house, as Andrew is old enough to want to latch on to these easy reads that hook and carry you along. And, I guess they have thier place….the reader gets the satisfaction of having completed a big book, which then hopefully gives them confidence to up it a knotch to something more difficult.

Or not. There are readers out there who never move on. Just like there are those who never eat more than junk food and sweets. Candy….”doesnt’ have to have a point” as they say in Willy Wonka. And, as my last post indicates, I think pointless candy, both mind and edible, has a place. But a steady diet of it makes the mind and body weak and sick.

What might a sick and weak mind look like? Well, that diagramming conversation and the seeming meaninglessness of it came crashing in. That kind of breakdown helps readers figure out WHO is doing WHAT and HOW. It helps with discernment. It helps to discover what something is really ABOUT, even if that isn’t immediately clear.

One tangent we got into in our book conversation today was how to determine the appropriateness of books for children. Harry Potter came up, so did all that sentimental serial fiction from our past, and so did other things like modern christian fiction, dark writing like the Flowers in the Attic series, and many others.

And it occurred to me: I’d rather have the clearly defined light and dark orphaned boy looking for love and salvation while at boarding school story of Harry Potter in my kids’ hands than some of that “light serial” stuff of my past with it’s subtle and disguised value influence…the pink and happy faces all scrubbed clean but with aspirations and lifestyles that are on a destructive path. Or take the repetitive formula of books like Nancy Drew. Read 3 of them and you can pretty much solve any case. It’s like taking a walk and being mindful not to work up a sweat. Some of the women’s fiction is just as quietly offensive…churning out whinning women who are melodramatic and overly emotional.

Books have incredible power. Any reader is no doubt gonna stumble on some duds along the collection of great ones. Candy has it’s place but so does meat, milk, and bread. Don’t forget fiber and vegetables full of nutritents. Real work outs that cause excertion and concentration. I guess we shouldn’t assume that just because something has a shiny, happy cover, claims to be christian, or even just relaxing that it’s necessarily good *or* harmful. Or, in the case of Don blankety-blank Quixote, that just because it’s a classic that it’s any good either! Stuff that looks dark may not be. Learn what things are ABOUT.