Alternative medicine & conventional medicine

A couple of weeks ago I had an upset stomach, not sure what caused it whether it is as I suspect food poisoning (self inflicted by not cleaning the microwave after making sure some chicken wasn't undercooked, it has since been sterilised) or whether it was the bug that was going around, I'm less likely to go with that as I was not vomiting like everyone else was. I started out drinking some fennel tea as that usually stops such things, but it didn't, I then took some loperimide (immodium for those who do brands) that didn't work either but by this time it was the weekend & the doctors would be open until Monday, so I bit the bullet, if neither were working on their own work them together, I also upped the dose on the herbal remedies too & it seemed to do the trick. Moral of the story is do not dismiss one for the other, if neither are working, as long as it is safe to do so use them combined. I know too many people who would dismiss the validity of herbal medicine but also those who think that conventional medicine is more harmful than good, neither approaches I think are helpful as you could end up missing out on something that could better treat your condition.

Sometimes logic can be quicker than the internet

Yesterday I almost went into what is now habitual, if I don't immediately know something & I know I don't have the answer in a book, to look it up on the internet. Yesterday  for the first time I was making a cake using duck eggs which are bigger than hens eggs & richer, but I lacked a specific duck egg cake recipe so getting the consistency right would mean different weights & measures. I was about to fire up the computer when all of a sudden my problem solving part of my brain perked up, weigh the eggs & then measure out the ingredients to scale, this did save me time & the cake turned out delicious, but it has now got me wondering how much do I turn to the computer for answers rather than thinking solutions to a problem myself? Have I just become to reliant on letting a machine do my thinking for me? One thing I do still use my intuition & problem solving with are my faith practices as I feel that as a Witch my workings of that nature are fluid & find that it is the most practical way of doing things. If I can do it with that then why do I turn to a machine for almost everything else? I'm a sensible if somewhat strange human being, logic should come & usually does come easily to me. Has the computer just made me become lazy in my thought processes? I think that that is something to I need meditate on.

Losing Weight

I have registered at my local doctors but in the consultation I got put into the obese catergory & because I have 2 diabetic parents have been told to lose weight which is fine with the execption that I'm supposed to lose 5 stone to fit into the height to weight ratio according to health guidelines. The problem comes with the fact for me to lose that amount of weight I would also need to lose muscle as well as the fat that I have to become 13 stone, so diet, exercise & muscle wastage. I know I can do the first 2 but how am I supposed to do the latter I'm not entirely sure. I am back on a healthier diet than what I was as since Christmas I have been eating junk. My main weakness is for snacking & ale I need to stop doing both but need to have the will power. I will allow ale on mootnights but think the drinking at home must be cut down dramatically, plus I'm not sure I'm drinking enough water anyway so may be able to kill two birds with one stone. I'm also putting down the rule of if the sweet treats are not home made they don't get eaten & one more thing I need to do as far food is concerned is to cut down on portion size my family are large eaters, as to whether I can do it is another question, but what I do eat is a lot healthier some people I know as I don't eat processed food as a rule as I love cooking from scratch & I love fruit & veg & generally crave it if I haven't had enough of them. I also need to connect the the Kinect back up on my Xbox too so I can increase my exercise from walking 8.5 miles on work days to adding more cardiovascular exercise to it too, though when the weather perks up I have a fair few heavy jobs on my new veggie plot & in my back garden so that will be a boost too. But where the weight loss scale does fall down is on muscle as last time I lost the inches around the trunk of my body my weight went up, so I could have the perfect six pack & still be called obese, what happens if/when that happens? I guess I won't know but I would question it seeing as though most rugby players have a bmi that suggests they should have difficulties walking. Wish me luck & I shall be hitting the spell books for an extra boost when the moon has changed to waning.

Quicktime

Perhaps I'm a victim of the instant society, I order online & it arrives in a couple of days. I recently, well not so recently bought a hoodie from America, so far it has taken 2 months to get here it is due to arrive today. It was meant to be for my nephew's birthday, which was over a month ago. But going back not that long ago this would not have seemed that unusual, perhaps I should have pre empted this & ordered it 4 months ago, but it is the first time that even something from America has taken this long to arrive. In all fairness though they did not take the payment until it was well on its way, which I suppose is a good thing. But just as I was thinking it there were a couple of independent t-shirt retailers in Britain who took a little while to deliver, perhaps it is more of  small business thing in which case, I should be more patient as they have fewer staff to put through larger orders. But beyond just getting gifts, I do feel that perhaps we try & do things far to instantly, how many people take time to cook nowadays, people want higher speed travel & communications, just feeling frustrated a reply to an email can sometimes take a few hours rather than seconds ignoring the fact that sometimes people are busy elsewhere. In the days of post it would take longer & that was not that long ago. So perhaps we should learn patience, my German friendship cake was not instant but well worth the wait. Perhaps I should follow my own advice a bit more too. Good things come to he who waits including promotion, woohoo.

Having belief in yourself

Two posts in one day, woohoo, more to do with the fact that I was supposed to have don one of them yesterday but got sidetracked. So today's meant to post today post is this. As mentioned in my previous post I go to the Pride Proms, which is performed by the BGSO. Each time they pick something that is a bit tricky, they end up stressing, why I'm not entirely sure as they usually pull it out of the bag, this time being no exception. But one of people's main problems mine included if the truth be told is having belief in your self that you can do something. Confidence that you can do something goes a long way in helping you to do it. When I fail in something, it is usually when I don't believe in myself in what I am doing, OK sometimes things don't work out quite as well as anticipated but don't let that put you off, learn from it & then prepare yourself for the next time you have to do it knowing that you not to make whatever mistake it was again & you are approaching things differently rather than hide away, concentrate on what you do well & not what you make mistakes on & you will find you make fewer mistakes & are less likely to fade into the background. The ones who appear confident are the ones that shine & the ones that get noticed in the things that they do & who they are. So go out there be confident & people will appreciate & notice what you do more. Be bold

I think I've forgotten something

You know those nagging feelings you get, sometimes it is teamed up with the paranoia did I remember to do whatever it is usually lock the back door or switch the oven off, which when you are walking down the road & then all of a sudden do a U turn must make the people in my neighbourhood think I am nuts, which admittedly many people accuse me of even my nearest & dearest. At times it makes me think I am paranoid or OCD, but I have come to the realisation that it is neither, as the other day whilst setting out for work I got halfway up the road & thought I don't remember locking the back door or switching of the oven, I went back to check & low & behold I hadn't. Last night I thought I had left the oven on when I went to check it was off, but I new there was something I had missed, I hadn't closed the window downstairs. So other than my tending to get distracted & general mind on too many other things than what is in logical order I find that it is good survival instinct. But there are times when I do things as a course of habit & pay no attention to doing it. Most of the time I double back on myself I find that the house is all safe & secure & I beat myself up for not having the confidence in myself not to have forgotten anything. I also forget my shifts at work a lot generally because I'm taking all the things I have to do or need to ponder on from the day. I have tried writing down my shifts but most of the time my shifts change so that is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. I often find that I have to phone in to find out, they must get fed up of me doing it & I very much apologise for that. I just thank goodness that...... oh the irony I can't remember where I was going that statement, I will kick myself later, nope still not there. I shall leave it at that & post a reply if I remember where I'm going with it. Yours forgetfully Pagan Chaplain

Facebook Game Notifications

I was one of these people, I would play Farmville etc, but now I don't. apart from the monotony of the games that used to take up hours of my time the biggest thing that annoyed me was the notifications when I achieved something or making requests for something I needed. It clogged up my social feed, anything profound that was said got lost in a mass of cutesy pictures that meant little more than I had way too much time on my hands. It filled the strong sunlight hours which I would not go out in unless absolutely necessary but that was all it did. I have got to the point where I'm getting fed up of request from other people to play a game that I left as it was so mind numbing that I was only habitually playing it. A colleague of my partner was having difficulties with the processing speed on his smart phone & had a friend whose only posts were 'HELP' repeatedly with no pictures or follow up dialogue & being the dutiful got onto the phone to friend wondering what was going on & being rather concerned, when his friend didn't answer panic set in until one call got through to him only to explain that he needed a budgie for his pet shop game. I have no objection to people playing the games but the clogging up of Facebook with all the pictures does get me annoyed, it never used to as I was one of those people, but now being an outsider it bugs me & the fact that you can buy vouchers for said games is a little worrying too as what's the point? So if you play them that is all well & good but could you make your requests internal between friends who do play them & keep your achievements hushed? as it is taking longer for me to scroll down my pages. I would also like to say sorry to those who had to put up with me doing the same for a couple of years.

Dumping Stuff in the Canal

One word of advice if you have live fish swimming in & out of your shopping trolley, you have parked it in the wrong place. Maybe it is just that canals have a magnetic charge that specifically targets shopping trolleys. This week saw the removal of a load of things dumped into the stretch of the canal I walk along by a crane attached to a narrow boat & it appears that  some people just really don't care about the environment, it seems that some people like to dump all sorts of things in there. Over the cold snap we had last winter somebody had parked their child's broken kiddie car onto the ice, possibly just to see how long it took to sink. Sometimes it makes you think what is going through people's heads at the time, but the thing that concerned the most more than the shopping trolleys, the bikes & other things that have wheels, was a car battery, thankfully it didn't look as though it had leaked, but if it had it could have killed so much wildlife. I was not the only one who was angered, one onlooker said he knows some people who do it & he had torn strips off them for doing it, good on him, it was just a pity he couldn't tell what they had dumped in there from what had come out of it as I'm sure it would have looked & smelled lovely in their living room & would be the talk of the neighbourhood. It isn't as if the Black Country doesn't have enough scrap metal collectors to take their rubbish away. OK the canals do seem to lack bins for things other than dog excrement (although these aren't used as frequently as they should be either). One of the days we are going to see a fish looking like the one out of The Simpsons. please if you find a shopping trolley in your garden from a night you can't remember please return it back to the supermarket I'm sure they will appreciate more than a water vole would.

The Liking of Patterns

I don't know where it all started from, but I do like patterns, predominantly stripes, rotational symmetry & spirals. It goes from my choice of patterned clothes which are predominantly stripy when patterned or occasionally plaid to the way I arrange beer mats when I'm fidgety which are in rotational symmetry. But then I have noticed other people doing it too. I also have a thing of when I'm serving food either all the crockery & cutlery either have to match or have to be completely mismatching, no half way house allowed & again found people who do exactly the same. I had a friend who works psychiatric care whilst I went to the toilet, moved a book that I was reading which was put down near a set of beer mats which I had arranged earlier to see if I would notice, but because it wasn't part of the pattern I was oblivious to what he had done, so he said it was probably not OCD but just a liking of certain things being just so as the book moving would have bothered me. I suppose it is just one of my quirks which I'll never be able to explain, it wouldn't be the first time I was called eccentric (sometimes weird) by people but I tend to wear it as a badge of honour. Today clothing wise I think it will be another day of wearing plain unpatterned clothes as none of my stripes are current uniform at work, so I'll just rock backwards & forwards in a corner at work until the normal pattern is restored.