Actually, we all need to get more sleep, but we really need to get our ZZ’s before cold, flu, and COVID season rolls around again. The average American adult gets only 5 hours and 30 minutes of sleep per night, rather than the 7 to 9 hours which are considered optimal. This sleep debt impacts negatively our health in many ways. Lack of sleep is a factor for obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure,
The regions with the shortest sleep duration also have the highest prevalence of obesity and other chronic conditions.
In a 2015 study of 164 healthy adults who were exposed to a dose of live culture in their nose and then had their sleep measured for a week, those who slept fewer than 5 hours a night had an almost 50% infection rate, but those who slept 7 hours or more had an 18% infection rate. The takeaway is “With just a week of reduced sleep, the body becomes immunologically weak.”
Another study in 2002 involved healthy adults who were divided into a group that got 4 hours of sleep a night and a group that got between 7.5 and 8 hours of sleep a night, both for 6 nights, before getting a standard influenza vaccine. The participants with a full night’s sleep had a robust antibody response to the vaccine whereas those with diminished sleep had less than half the antibody response of their peers.
Asleep at the Wheel: a Sure Sign of Sleep Debt
Can we “catch up on our sleep” or do we have a debt we cannot repay? The study let the participants sleep for 2 to 3 weeks afterward to recover their antibody response, but they still didn’t get it recovered. The researchers conclude “Here again, this suggests that the response to the flu shot is impaired in those with chronic sleep deprivation.”
My daddy was a physician who was a big believer in sleep. He knew how to fall asleep the instant his head hit the pillow. A sleep deprived internship likely trained him in this art. How can the rest of us maximize our bedtime hours to get the best sleep? Our good sleep habits actually begin in the daytime with some exercise and about a half hour out of doors in the daylight. This sets our inner clock or our circadian rhythm.
Tips for a Good Night’s Sleep
Keeping a regular bedtime is important, but also having a wind down time before bed helps. I’m personally fond of exciting crime shows on tv, but I switch them off at 10 pm and turn on my quiet music stations as I wind down for bedtime. I make a couple of cups of decaffeinated herb tea and check in on my hobby threads and tweets. I load the dishwasher, play a game of sudoku or solitaire, and then I’m done for the day. I check my calendar to make sure I don’t need to hurry out in the morning, and I can have a peaceful sleep knowing tomorrow is another day.
I realize some of my kitchen peeps will go to bed with worries, which will keep you awake. If you cannot solve them in your pajamas or nighties, why not get a good night’s sleep and work on them the next day while you’re dressed up and fit to kill? Those problems will look smaller in the daylight and you’ll be better able to see your solutions. My prayer when I’m in bed is simple: “I’ve done all the good I can today. I’m giving the night over to you, God. Tomorrow morning we can work on things together.”
“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” —Matthew 17:20
To sum up, this fall we’re going to have the flu come around, we’ll also have new variants of COVID arising, and some of us—the very young and the elderly—may get RSV, which isn’t novel, but is dangerous for the vulnerable. I plan on getting vaccinated for flu and COVID, but not for RSV, since I’m not in the vulnerable category. My advice is, get your sleep in the bank for several weeks beforehand. You want your immune system to have the best response to these vaccines possible.
We also may need to get our mask act back together and take it on the road again this fall. Some folks will throw caution to the wind, or listen to bad information, such as “masks don’t work, so don’t wear one.” When people see images or videos of millions of respiratory particles exhaled by talking or coughing, they may be afraid that simple masks with limited filtration efficiency (e.g., 30 to 70%) cannot really protect them from inhaling these particles.
The gold funerary mask of Agamemnon of Mycenae; this is not the mask for COVID prevention.
“However, as only few respiratory particles contain viruses and most environments are in a virus-limited regime, wearing masks can keep the number of inhaled viruses in a low-Pinf regime and can explain the observed efficacy of face masks in preventing the spread of COVID-19.” In plain speak, most of us aren’t in a high infectious environment, so wearing a mask is protective if it covers our nose and mouth. I recommend hand washing whenever you come inside your home also.
We’ve already gone through this one time, we have a T shirt, and while we’ve consigned this article of clothing to the scrap pile, we do have muscle memory. So what if those muscles are feeling a tad strained? We can do this, for we’re resilient and we want to be around to tell the next generation how we suffered like no generation before us.
My daddy claimed to walk daily seven miles up hill through the snow to his grammar school. I believed him until the day I realized he lived only two city blocks from this three story red brick building.
“Oh, but those drifts were so deep I had to take the long way around!” My daddy was a mess. We lived in the Deep South and an inch of snow was enough to close our schools for several days.
We can handle anything that comes our way with a sense of humor and the grace of God. And we’ll have great stories to tell after this! Be well my friends.
Back when I was in art school, the fancy pants Pepperidge Farm bread loaves cost a whopping 39 cents. I lived with some fellow students in a third floor walk up apartment without air conditioning in the Deep South. We all agreed this was far too much money to pay for a loaf of bread. Back then a dozen eggs were 62 cents and a loaf of white bread was 23 cents. Of course, the minimum wage was $1.60, and we were starving artists.
The Old Days: Bread at a Bakery
I shop for food, just like everyone else who doesn’t subscribe to a weekly box delivery. I’m a sale shopper, which means I buy what’s in season and what the grocer is promoting. This doesn’t always mean I get what I want, but I don’t shop at Burger King, I shop at my local supermarket.
Grocery Store Inflation is Down
The good news is omelettes are back on the menu at Cornie’s Kitchen! When eggs were at close to $4 per dozen, I rationed them as if they were gold. Now a dozen large eggs are $1.49! Here’s some good news:
Inflation has fallen for 11 months in a row, and grocery prices have come down over the past few months with a sharp and welcome drop in egg prices – that’s some breathing room for middle class families.
Annual Inflation Rate as of June 13, 2023
Back about 1974, I was working in a local grocery store when President Gerald Ford tackled inflation with his WIN campaign—Whip Inflation Now. Inflation was running at 12% annually and Ford proposed it could be brought under control if all Americans refused to buy products from merchants that raised their prices. Alan Greenspan, a top economist, realized this was like “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” It would only harm the economy and merchants, plus people wouldn’t have what they needed. People began to wear the buttons upside down: No Immediate Miracles.
An idea that went over like a lead balloon
At Cornie’s Kitchen, our inflation fighting tools remain the same. We still recommend checking the app, flyer, or website of the store you frequent. Then clip the coupons, make a list for your weekly menu, buy only those items, and ignore impulse purchases. If you’re not going to eat a whole quart of something, you don’t save money by buying the larger size. Buy the pint instead.
If this seems time consuming to my kitchen peeps, I’d like to quote Tom Hanks in Castaway: “Time is money!”
Custom Made FedEx Box
If we’re going to fuss about how much things cost, let’s take action about it. Otherwise we’re just blowing into the wind and making ourselves sick for nothing.
This has been a word from your great grandmother, who has a cookie always ready to sweeten whatever hard talk she dispenses to her younger kinfolk. Let’s all bake in the early morning or late at night, to save on energy costs. OR—buying bakery cookies in the summer is a good solution also, since they can heat up their facility and you can keep your home cool instead.
Today is Homemade Soup Day, but I can eat this simple soup any day of the week! I often vary the taste by changing the spices. Today I’ve chosen to emphasize basil and Italian spices. Other times I’ll use a chili base or a rosemary garlic base. It just depends on the weather and my mood. I find having a basic form I can “riff upon” allows me to exercise my creative gifts in the kitchen. Also, I’m easily bored, so exact measurements are out. Experiment with “a touch of this” and a “little more of that,”
Simple Chicken and Vegetable Soup
Basic recipe for 4 servings: Sauté 1/2 chopped onion and 1 clove chopped garlic in 1 Tbs olive oil Add 1 package of frozen mixed vegetables (4 servings) Add 12 ounces chopped breast meat (I use deli roasted chicken) Add 12 ounces grape tomatoes sliced in half (I used multi colored tomatoes) Add enough water to cover the ingredients Add 1 cube chicken bouillon crushed Cook until vegetables are sufficiently done to family taste. (I don’t overcook mine, but I still have all my teeth.)
Each serving is about 1 1/2 cups, plus I add 1 ounce of cheddar cheese to each bowl, and the whole is under 350 calories. Sometimes I vary the cheese, but I limit it to 1 ounce.
This recipe has 17 grams of carbs, 4 grams of fiber, plus about 38 grams of protein, not counting the cheese. A carb serving is 15 grams, so this recipe fits into a common diabetic meal plan. It has twice as much protein, so those who want more protein should enjoy this recipe. Protein keeps us satisfied, as do complex carbohydrates.
Simple, over processed carbohydrates, such as crystalline sugar, white flour, and juices will spike our blood sugar and lead to dips also. Those of us with glucose issues try to keep our levels as even as possible, neither high or low. Next time you get the “hangrys,” think about what you consumed two hours ago.
While some avoid all dairy, I keep the cheese for staving off hunger, since I try not to graze in between meals. A little bit of fat also helps keep a youthful skin as well as being necessary to dissolve certain vitamins.
On days when I’m busy, I’m glad Mr. Stove can reheat my meal quickly. Mr. Microwave gave up the ghost right before Christmas. I have his replacement in a box on my kitchen table, but my contractor has been busy with frozen pipe damage and hasn’t been by to install it. We’ve had yet another reminder of winter’s brutality here at the first of February, so I may be bereft until springtime. These are minor difficulties, however, since I live in a protected valley where nature’s underground hot springs seem to send all that dangerous weather around us.
The cold came instead, and I was glad Mr. Coffee kept perking and Mr. Stove and Mr. Oven were on duty. I even lost three pounds, but that might have been from shivering whenever I went outside! Try the soup, keep a positive attitude, and believe always God loves you and so do I.
My under caffeinated brain did not at first appreciate this fine, but terrible map. When crunch time would come during my working life, I often had to admit I wasn’t Wonder Woman. Eventually too many extra duties would mean take out meals or delivery instead of a home cooked dinner. I only have so many brain cells, and the holidays or other stressful times would fry what few I have left. I don’t have “the I’m working and I have too much to do” excuse now. I just seem to get more easily stressed as I get older. Hello, Domino’s?
Biltmore Mansion Sitting Room Christmas Tree
I also have come to grips with the reality my “fantasy Christmas decor” is guided by the champagne pocketbooks of the Vanderbilt family, who undertook a six year building plan to create the nation’s largest residential project near the turn of the 19th C. The family opened the Biltmore Estate to family and guests on Christmas Eve, 1895. Named for a Dutch town from which the Vanderbilts hailed and “more,” a word for the rolling hills of North Carolina, the home itself covers over four acres of floor space, and has 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. Every living area gets a Christmas tree or holiday decor, but the work rooms were kept scrupulously clean, of course. My Christmas decor is more a beer or Diet Coke pocketbook in comparison.
Biltmore Mansion Main Kitchen and Copper Pans
During the Great Depression, the family opened the home to tourism to help the Asheville economy and in World War II, the National Gallery of Art stored America’s priceless art treasures here, away from “ground zero.” Today, the Biltmore is a National Historic Landmark and offers tours of its buildings and extensive grounds. It also has a winery, as well as deluxe (champagne) accommodations for guests. I stayed with a friend nearby and took the grand tour. With 8,000 acres of grounds, we took the auto tour!
As we get ever closer to the “NIGHT,” for those who believe in Christ and celebrate his birth, sometimes we forget simplicity, love, and worship are more important than rich gifts. After all, only the magi from the east brought gifts fit for a king. Everyone else came to be a witness.
Adoration of the Christ Child, Book of Hours, France, 16th C, manuscript illustration, The Morgan Library
If you don’t have something checked off your to do list by now, don’t stress about this being a “terrible Christmas.” Mary and Joseph weren’t with their family, or even at a Motel 6. They shared the cave and manger where the animals spent the night. None of their family came to help them birth the savior. Angels announced his birth, but only lowly shepherds heard the good news, so they came to adore the little one.
Sandro Botticelli, The Mystic Nativity (1501), London National Gallery
No one back then had credit card debt to pay off in January, which just adds more stress to our already crazy lives. The Holy Family did have to flee to Egypt to escape King Herod, who ordered all the children under two years old to be killed, for the magi had told him a new king had been born. (Egypt is the top right corner on the map above).
Odilon Redon: Rest on the Flight into Egypt, oil on canvas, 1900-1903, Musée d’Orsay, France.
Another place TO GO is your local church for Christmas Eve: most churches, including First UMC in Hot Springs at 1100 Central Avenue, will have an evening candlelight service with carols.
My Antique Santa Mug, from which I drink a small toast to Santa every Christmas Eve, since I was eight years old.
Relax with a mug of hot chocolate, listen to Christmas music on the radio, the tv, or your phone, and enjoy the life and love of the Holy Family poured into your family’s hearts and minds. Hug each other and be thankful. Even for those of us who live alone, remember, we are united into the great and unbroken love of God with all the saints beyond and all the saints still living. We are one large family, part of God’s holy and beloved family.
God bless and Merry Christmas to my Kitchen Peeps!
It’s October first, also known as National Hair Day. When my daughter was young, Princess Leah buns were all the rage. This hair do from the Paris Couture Fashion House Spring Collections may or may not find public acclaim. If not, I invite you to try it for your Halloween look.
Puppy Ear Twists
My old daddy rabbit used to say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” It’s an old saw or epigram, first recorded in 1849 by the French critic, journalist, and novelist Alphonse Karr in Les Guêpes, a monthly journal he founded: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The month of October, we rabbits know, is the season of Pumpkin Spice. Everything and Everywhere.
Pumpkin Spice Oreos: because it’s not chocolate!
Once limited to muffins and pies, this ubiquitous spice now appears in Greenies pumpkin spice flavor dog treats, Pumpkin Spice Oreos, and Pumpkin Spice Peeps, among others to numerous to name. I’m not biting on most of these, since adding sugar to a salty food isn’t in my taste palette. If it works for you, then you’re welcome to my share.
Lovely Harvest Home Décor: I admit, I have “door envy,” since I no longer live in a house. I don’t get to decorate my condo hallway since it’s a Fire Hazzard.
House decorating is in full swing, however, since we can decorate our rabbit dens in full pumpkin harvest mode, or go extreme “spooktacular” with high haunted house décor. Or you might find your humble rabbit abode decorated with streams of toilet papers, as mine once was when I taught school back in the day. I’d just returned from trick or treating with my kindergarten child, when I met two of my junior high students dressed in black garbage bags walking past my home. Their giggling, guilty faces told me I needed to walk up the block to visit with their parents. We had a nice drink and a little chat while they sent their son and his friend down to clean up my TP’ed tree and house. They were a tad old to be out trick or treating. At their age, they were mostly up to tricking. Also, high pressure water from the garden hose is the best way to remove the high remnants of the evidence. The folks who used fire risked damage to their tree and a spread to both their home and to their neighbors’ homes. Conflagration isn’t a rabbit’s best choice.
Toilet Paper Trees: A Pre Pandemic Pastime
Dressing up in costumes is always loads of fun. Parents and holiday hosts are of two minds about the “dark side” of Halloween, even though this holiday has its roots in the ghouls and goblins which haunt the world in advance of All Saints’ Day. The same rabbit parents, who only allow “positive costumes” at their Harvest Festivals, most likely spare their bunny children the traumatic stories of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I wouldn’t expose the very youngest bunnies to these often frightening stories, but older rabbits (age 6 or 7) can learn to face difficult situations and address important issues in fiction before they have to meet them in real life. We do see these same themes in Disney movies, however. Our young bunnies can learn to be resilient heroes by imagining themselves as part of these stories.
Every year when I was a young bunny we made our costumes, but now people love to buy their dress up outfits. In my closet, I always had a “pile of dress up clothing,” cast off from my mother. It was a literal pile, for I wasn’t exactly a neat child. My mother used to scare me into cleaning it up by saying, “A rat will come out of there one day!” Children are always afraid of boogeymen and monsters, things that go bump in the night, as well as creatures both real and imagined. I was in college before I could sleep with my closet door open.
We small creatures have real fears, as Peter Rabbit was right to fear Farmer Brown in the garden. When we watch Sharknado movies or Japanese horror movies about atomic energy creating Godzilla or other ginormous monsters, we can let these vicarious experiences carry our fears about real things in our world. Yet we also have “unfounded fears,” which are figments of our imagination. In this harvest season, some think no matter how much they gather, they’ll never have enough. They live with an attitude of scarcity, while others have faith in God’s providence and abundance. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9:8—
“And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”
In my spiritual formation training, I’ve been impressed by the Enneagram system. It’s named for the Greek words for Nine and Writing. According to the Enneagram, each of the nine personality types are defined by a particular core belief about how the world works. This core belief drives our deepest motivations and fears— and fundamentally shapes a person’s worldview and the perspective through which they see the world and the people around them. Our core beliefs aren’t necessarily incorrect, but they can be limiting and operate as “blinders” for people.
Enneagram Pattern
Understanding our Enneagram type and how it colors our perceptions can help us to broaden our perspective and approach situations more effectively.The Enneagram represents personality patterns as defense mechanisms, which are fundamentally driven by certain basic fears as explained in “The Wisdom of the Enneagram” (Riso & Hudson, 1999). Each of the nine Enneagram types therefore is likely to show the following inherent fear:
Type 1s: Fear being wrong or lazy—Perfectionists aim to be principled, good, controlled and intentional. Not having high standards or being unexceptional is unacceptable to these individuals. They can be expected to overextend themselves in order to achieve, and to steer away from what is wrong towards what is virtuous.
Type 2s: Fear being unloved and unwanted—Helpers feel that they need to be strong and generous towards others. They prove themselves worthy of love and acceptance by taking the responsibility to help and support others to the point of sacrificing their own needs.
Type 3s: Fear being worthless and disrespected—Achievers or Performers strive to achieve success and recognition by being ambitious, competitive, persuasive and adaptable. They feel that they will earn the admiration, trust and love of others through their reputation, image and self-image and impressive achievements.
Type 4s: Fear meaninglessness—Romantics or Individualists avoid being boring, normal, superficial, uninteresting, average or mediocre. They seek depth, meaning, intimacy and self-expression and earn love by being emotionally intense, creative, expressive, artistic or dramatic. They may also come across as temperamental or spiritually inclined.
Type 5s: Fear not knowing—Observers or Investigators aim at being in control by understanding their world. They are ruled by the head as opposed to the heart, seek learning and insight, and avoid feeling ignorant, inadequate, helpless and clueless. They earn the respect and acceptance of others by being competent and effective.
Type 6s: Fear chaos—Loyalists or Guardians deeply engage with others and their environments to ensure that all is well. They have a strong sense of responsibility and respond to their inner distrust and doubt by being vigilant, supportive of others and controlling. They are loyal and strive for security and connection with others.
Type 7s: Fear deprivation—Enthusiasts seek sensation, fun, stimulation, variety and fulfillment in order to avoid disappointment, pain, sadness and/or helplessness. Their spontaneous and versatile behavior is aimed at pursuing desires that they fear will not be fulfilled by others.
Type 8s: Fear being controlled—Challengers come across as assertive, willful, self-directed and confident. Their core fear is to be controlled, violated, betrayed and/or limited by circumstances. They avoid this by taking control in a powerful and self-sufficient way to ensure they get what they want.
Type 9s: Fear being confronted—Peacemakers are fearful of conflict, disharmony and being disconnected from others. They therefore refrain from questioning or challenging themselves or other people and instead accommodate others to maintain peace, harmony and stability.
A Tale of Two Gold Foil Covered Chocolate Rabbits
One fear all bunnydom can lay to rest for the future is the authenticity of their chocolate Easter bunnies, the ones wrapped in gold foil. Other chocolate products are also sold at Easter time—crosses, eggs, and nut or cream filled eggs. Only Lindt gold foil wrapped chocolate bunnies are copyrighted. When another manufacturer began to sell a nearly identical product, of course the rabbits brought in the lawyers and a yearlong court battle ensued.
The Rabbit Lawyers
After a years long legal battle, the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland sided with Lindt and found that Lidl’s chocolate bunnies could be confused with Lindt’s chocolate bunnies, which are protected under Swiss trademark law. (This rabbit was even confused by the chocolatiers’ names, which look similar at first glance. I had to remind myself not to speed read!) In one case lasting eight years, Lindt and Austrian rival Hauswirth fought over their chocolate bunnies (and whether chocolate bunnies could even be trademarked). The court ruled in favor of Lindt and ordered the latter to stop making its product. But it wasn’t until 2021 that Germany’s federal court ruled that the gold-colored wrapping for Lindt’s chocolate bunny had trademark protection. Lindt also won this latest case, so any remaining Lidl chocolate bunnies will be melted down and find new life as eggs or other shapes.
So Much Candy
Some of us bunny types will eat ourselves sick, unless we portion out our Halloween Haul of treats. My parents introduced us to “restrictive eating” when we were young bunnies. Of course, they couldn’t account for what we ate while we raced eagerly from house to house in the gathering darkness, but once we got home, they gathered up the goodies. I always ate my ration of the chocolate and nut items from my collection, and was glad to share the pure sugar candies with my brothers. I was a chocoholic from an early age, and unrepentant at my current hoary age.
St. Francis believed All Creatures were Our Brothers and Sisters On October 4, all bunnies and other living creatures celebrate St. Francis, who recognized the hand of God in all of creation. This day also marks Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which begins with a feast before sunset, continues faith fasting for 24 hours, before resuming with another meal. National Grouch day is the 15th, so we can get the grumps out of our system before the holidays come around.
The 17th is National Pasta Day and World Trauma Day. My recommendation would be for the cook in your kitchen to make a hearty whole grain pasta dish and savor each morsel in prayer for the hungry and displaced by war and famine in Africa, the Ukraine, and also for those fleeing Russia. These groups are the worst in need right now. You can add lean meat, mushrooms, fresh spinach, or precooked beans to your dish for extra flavor and nutrition. If you have extra, a gift to your community food bank will help the hungry through the winter.
Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, begins on October 24th and lasts for five days. Each day is dedicated to a different god or goddess, and the whole holiday is full of generosity and love. Believers celebrate the victory of light over darkness and life over death. Closing out October are National Pumpkin Day (26th) and Halloween on the 31st. Pumpkins grow on most continents, with the United States producing over 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkins every year. The Chinese actually lead in pumpkin production and have a proverb to match: “One cannot manage too many affairs; like pumpkins in water, one pops up while you try to hold down the other.”
If life gets too chaotic as we approach the season of successive holiday celebrations, this old bunny suggests breathing deeply and simplifying your list of things to do. Not everything is a life or death situation, or a hair on fire moment. Sometimes we bunnies are just having a bed-head day, so we don’t need every fire truck in the county to show up at our front door. Some things we assign a 10 on the scale of 1 to 10 are actually 3’s. Not everything is a 10 all the time. Of course, when I was very young, I hadn’t yet learned I could survive these “#10 crisis events,” so when I was older, I had some history of surviving them. As we know from 1 Corinthians 10:13—
“No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and God will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing God will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”
Fire Engine To the Rescue!
May the ghouls and goblins do you no harm and you find no candy corn in your Halloween bucket.
The intent of the different intermittent-fasting regimes is to trick ourselves into lowering our calorie intake. Because we live in an obesogenic food environment where we can find affordable food 24/7 in forms we can consume almost instantly, no longer do we have to schlep out to the backyard shed, hack through the cobwebs, rescue the shovel from the pile of garden tools snoozing in the corner, and dig a potato out of the ground, much less find the axe to chop wood, make a fire and roast that spud before we can scarf it down.
One salad does not change your life or your body.
Obesegenic diets are SAD—Standard American Diets. Unfortunately, one third of Americans eat some type of fast food every single day. The average American individually spends $1,200 a year on fast food alone, which equals to around 10% of the income of the average American household.. That adds up to $110 billion dollars a year, an amount which could end world hunger for up to three years.
Mario E. Figueroa, Jr., aka GONZO247. He is the force behind some of Houston’s largest graffiti installations, including this one in EaDo at 1538 St. Emanuel as part of a mural brought about by McDonald’s Houston.
No wonder intermittent fasting became a craze, for it gave people a reason not to slide through the drive throughs and make obesience at the altars of grease. This diet program kept people from buying the giant bags of chips and tubs of dip, which they used to consume nightly before the television set. Intermittent fasting didn’t ever teach a wholistic view of nutrition or the pleasures of eating. It mostly focused only on restricting consumption of food.
As with other fad diets, the approach of intermittent fasting is dependent on long-term adherence, rather than short-term commitments. The Kitchen wags among us might say Intermittent Fasting is more like hooking up with food, rather than making a healthy, long term relationship with our eating behaviors. Oh, wait, I’m not even past the first page and I’ve already gone to meddling! My bad.
Perhaps we need to get a cup of your favorite brew and sit at the kitchen table for a while, so we can talk about the latest news. Science changes. This might be a new concept for some of you, but as we get more information, we sometimes have to change our conclusions. In math, 1 + 1 may always equal 2, but if we make a long term study with more diverse participants, we might get different data than a short term study that has only a limited group for a short term. One problem short term studies often have is a lack of women and persons of color. Since these two groups often have different hormones or food preferences than white men of a certain age (college students), the data might not be applicable to everyone.
It’s time to say “Sic transit gloria” to everything we’ve known to date about intermittent fasting. Forget what your fav celeb says about lemons or cucumbers in water or anything else that detoxes your liver in a fast. Your liver naturally detoxes itself unless you’re the victim of a Putin Poisioning. However, most of us aren’t coming into contact with dread dictators who send goons with poison pens to attack us for our food choices. Pass the hummus, please.
Treating one’s body badly, as if it were a prisoner of war.
The theory behind intermittent fasting is limiting calories by restricting the time in which a person consumes food. Most intermittent fasting diets don’t restrict the type or amount of food, but only the time in which it’s eaten. A common schedule is to skip breakfast, eat lunch and supper, and close the snacking off by 8 pm. This 8 hour window for eating “should” limit your calories, since you’d consume enough to be satiated and you’d sleep at least 6 to 8 hours of the possible 16 hours of fasting. That leaves only half the hours for actual fasting, during which you can drink any amount of noncaloric beverage of choice.
With intermittent Fasting, if you go to bed before 8 pm, you COULD eat cookies in bed. If you went to bed at 9 pm, the answer is NO! Early to bed means cookies, so you might get rewarded for catching up on your sleep.
When time restricted eating was studied in mice, the principle seemed to work. However in a large study among men and women, among patients with obesity, a regimen of time-restricted eating was not more beneficial with regard to reduction in body weight, body fat, or metabolic risk factors than daily calorie restriction. In short, even though the men were limited to 1,800 calories per day and the women 1,500 calories, restricting their eating to certain hours didn’t increase their weight loss, nor did it improve any other health factors.
Dreaming of Food
The bottom line, said Dr. Ethan Weiss, a diet researcher at the University of California, San Francisco: “There is no benefit to eating in a narrow window.” He didn’t want to accept this difficult conclusion, for he’d always been a proponent of time restricted eating and practiced it in his own life by skipping breakfast. He ate lunch and supper. He even asked the researchers to check their work four different times because he didn’t believe their conclusions. Finally, after getting the same answer time and again, he had to become a believer. He now eats three smaller meals per day, plus his family says he’s “nicer” to be with these days.
This emotion is known as HANGRY. It’s resolved by food.
The only reason I can see for anyone doing intermittent fasting is if you’re so distracted and discombobulated that you won’t spend any time on self care. In other words, you’re on the first stage of your journey to health and wholeness. You might be so busy caring for others, you’re not caring for yourself. If food is fuel and nourishment for your body, you’ll need good nourishment if you expect to have the strength for this journey.
With that said, being “too busy to eat” is a self defeating practice. If you think this activity gets you a reward for “strength or commitment to a cause,” you risk working until you’re so rundown you aren’t any good to anyone. If you think no one else can replace you, your loyalty likely won’t be rewarded. Business goes on and someone will need to take your place.
Carrying too many burdens on our journey
People who should not use intermittent fasting are those with an eating disorder or a metabolic condition. Restrictive eating isn’t healthy for anoxeria, bullemia, or persons with body dysmorphic disorders. Learning to see food as healthy, necessary, and appropriate, rather than forbidden is important for recovery from these distorted views of the self. Those of us with any form of insulin resistance—prediabetes, diabetes, PCOS—need to pay attention to how our bodies use carbohydrates. Exercise, stress, illness, and the types of foods we eat all affect our blood sugar. I have friends who manage their blood sugar with candy and sugared soda pops. I have others who won’t take their medication on a regular basis, and wonder why they have adverse symptoms.
I keep my food diary on my Fitbit app, but Nutritionix Track is another app that will separate your food choices into grams of carbs, proteins, and fats, as well as count your calories. They both have a great data base, plus you can manually enter a food and save it. This takes me all of five minutes at most, or about one television commercial, to do my daily entry.
Whole grains, lean meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, Greek yogurt, olive oil, and wine in limited amounts.
I have a small bite with coffee in the morning while I have coffee. Then I eat oatmeal for breakfast. I have lunch between noon and two o’clock. I eat a light dinner of Greek yogurt and fruit about 5:30 pm. Rarely do I need to snack before bed, but I check my blood sugar to make sure it’s above 100. If not, I have a snack bag of popcorn. In general, a diet which is rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and low in processed foods, saturated fats and red meat is beneficial for most people over the long term.
It’s Saturday. In only two weeks, it’ll be Christmas Day. Every young parent is stressed to the max. I remember those happy days, even though they were marked by my poverty of single parenthood. But, there was always the magic of Layaway, so I could buy a few items without credit charges.
The year my daughter wanted a Strawberry Shortcake Christmas was tough to pull off. The grandparents covered the pink strawberry shortcake bicycle, I got the matching dollhouse, and I painted a bedsheet with strawberries to make a canopy for her twin bed. She was most amazed by the canopy, as I recall, for it changed her ordinary room into a “princess room.”
Santa Mug
Today, I’m in total relaxation mood. As I drink coffee from an old Santa mug, I’m thinking about cooking some cheese straws or cookies, or maybe I’ll clean house to ready it for Santa. Always clean if expecting guests, even if only for a brief time, and even if they only exist in the imagination of our inner child. Then again, I might just let the elves do some of the busyness of this holiday season. Mr. Oven is worthless as a housekeeper, but an excellent cook. We all have our gifts.
My hand painted ceramic Santa mug from the 1950’s
Take time in these next two weeks for yourself and your family. I include as family all those near and far, both the family who brought you into the world and the people you chose as the family to keep you sane in our crazy, sometimes heartbreaking world. Have coffee with them, or tea if that’s your drink. Sit and savor it in the present moment.
It’s a gift you can give one another, to be with each other, even if we zoom or FaceTime. We can catch our breath. If you stay still, you may have a moment to reflect on your true purpose. Christmas and the other seasonal religious holidays at year’s end remind us the best gifts come from God: life, light, and joy. If we can share these with all people, those gifts caught up on some container ship in a supply chain boondoggle won’t seem very important after all.
Global economy and the world wide pandemic are two causes of the supply chain problem
Our true gift and our best gift every day is love, which is never measured in material things, but in the presence, the peace, and the blessings of giving. After all, it’s not the size of the gift, but the generosity of the heart that matters. As 2 Corinthians 8:12 reminds us:
“For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have.”
Taking time for coffee, as I wish you Joy and Peace,
Pandemic Poofs are all the rage these days and the bowl haircuts of of the Depression Era have once again become cool as the rabbits of this world hunker down in their burrows and entrust the clipping shears to their partners. Bunnies mostly don’t need haircuts, except for the Angoras, and they can imitate a 1960’s sculptural do with no effort.
Angora Bunny
All this talk of hair reminds me of our phased reopenings in these United States. Essential services have always been open, such as grocery and drug stores. For those bunnies out there who worried about your next meal, my guess is you weren’t among those lost your job and income. Those bunnies had reason to be concerned, yet God always opens the hearts of the generous to be even more giving during hard times. I always find it interesting how those who live in an attitude of fear and scarcity always seem to have too little, no matter how much they have; while those who live with the understanding of God’s abundance always have enough, no matter how few resources they have. As Psalms 112:9 reminds us, “He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn is exalted in honor.”
Barber shops and beauty parlors are reopening now with limits on the number of people inside, and with other stipulations, such as masks, social distancing , and screening. Some of us rabbits are glad to get our unruly mops tamed, and others are going to wait and see what the new growth looks like. After all, this pandemic has turned our world upside down. Where once we used to have casual Friday at work, now we have casual week as we work from home. All that gussying up, commuting, and being out and about has been laid aside for the duration of no one knows how long.
We don’t know if our hair is going to look like Cindy Loo Who, the Grinch, or a long haired Afghan dog. My grandmother often quoted this Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem to me:
Cindy Lou Who and the Grinch
There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid.
My new look
I think I was often in trouble when I heard it, for I remember it all too well. Why we worry about our looks when the world is out of whack isn’t too hard to figure out: how we look is one of the only things we can control. Those of us who’re going with the flow and letting new possibilities come from this sea change are the ones who are letting God write a new vision on our hearts and minds.
If we go back to “how things used to be,” all we’ll do is reinstitute the multiple layers of systemic injustice which have been made visible in the uneven ways the epidemic has impacted persons of color and communities in poverty. The lack of resources we put toward the most fragile of our society, especially our elders, speaks to our devaluation of those who can no longer contribute to the economic engine of our nation. How many years are we away from Soylent Green, the dystopian movie whose premise was the excess lives were recycled into food pellets for the masses?
Long Haired Afghan Dog
Even the toilet paper companies are adjusting to this new environment. Manufacturer Kimberly-Clark, maker of top brand Cottonelle, now makes more “mega” than “double” rolls of its toilet paper, and has cut the number of variations it makes to avoid pausing its assembly lines. It’s prioritizing six-roll packs over 12-packs, which helps spread the supply among more customers. Walmart used to have the rolls delivered to its warehouses for later distribution, but now the manufacturers deliver directly to the stores. The supply chain is changing. If we can transform the way we do business, we can change the way we live our lives and treat others. After all, what is more important, the dollar or the people who are the image of God?
Some of our rabbit leaders are comparing aspects of this pandemic to The Great Depression, which was a worldwide economic depression that lasted 10 years. It began on “Black Thursday,” Oct. 24, 1929. Over the next four days, stock prices fell 22% in the stock market crash of 1929. Hopefully our Age of Coronavirus won’t be that long. However long it lasts depends on a worldwide community effort. No single nation can fix this problem alone, since we live in a global village. We travel around the world, do business worldwide, and import and export foods and goods around the world. This is why we have good tomatoes in the winter, spring, and fall, before our own crops ripen, although to my taste, the quality still galls off in the winter. In our smaller communities, each one of us has to step up and care for one another, “to love our neighbors as ourselves.” To be selfish, and care only for “my individual rights” forgets the rights of the individuals with whom we coexist.
Dust Storm Approaching, Spearmint, Texas
As a refresher, for those of us rabbits who’ve forgotten our high school history classes, Black Sunday refers to a particularly severe dust storm, which occurred on April 14, 1935, during the time of the Dust Bowl, an ecological disaster which caused immense economic and agricultural damage. After World War I, plow-based farming in this region cultivated an unexpected yield: the loss of fertile topsoil that literally blew away in the winds, leaving the land vulnerable to drought and inhospitable for growing crops. In a brutal twist of fate, the rains stopped. By 1932, 14 dust storms, known as black blizzards were reported, and in just one year, the number increased to nearly 40.
The winds were so strong, they displaced an estimated 300 million tons of topsoil from the prairie area. On the afternoon of April 14, 1935, residents of several plains states from Oklahoma to Texas had to take cover as a dust storm or “black blizzard” blew through the region. The conditions were the most severe in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, but the storm’s effects were also felt in other surrounding areas. The combination of drought, erosion, bare soil, and winds caused the dust to fly freely and at high speeds. Millions of people fled the region. The government enacted aid programs to help, but it wasn’t until 1939 when the rain returned that relief came.
It took millions of tons of dirt and debris blowing from the Plains all the way into Washington D.C., known as “Black Sunday,” to move Congress to pass the Soil Conservation Act and establish the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) under the Department of Agriculture. The folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote House of Earth: A Novel, the story of an ordinary couple’s dreams of a better life and their search for love and meaning in a corrupt world, as an expression of the hardships of this time.
Pregnant Sharecropper’s Wife Standing in Doorway of Wooden Shack with Daughter, the Depression, by Arthur Rothstein
The ten years our ancestors spent in the Depression is a long time to endure suffering. We don’t know how long or how deep our current situation will be, but we have more tools available to us today than our ancestors did. We have to be able to work a plan and monitor and adjust it as we go along. For a comparison to the time of this “most recent unpleasantness,” we have to look to the arrival date of the virus on our shores.
The CDC first alerted the medical community about 2019-nCoV in the United States beginning on January 8, 2020, so they could to be on the look-out for patients with respiratory symptoms and a history of travel to Wuhan, China. The first confirmed case in the USA arrived from China on January 15, 2020, or 4 months, 18 days including the end date of June 1, 2020. We rabbits today are living only 3% of the time our grand rabbits and great grand rabbits spent during that time of struggle (10 years is 120 months, so 4 months is only 3% of that amount). If the time seems to stretch out longer than 4 1/2 months, my bunny sense tells me it’s because one day flows into another and we don’t have the demarcation of the work week versus the weekend anymore.
Clockwork Rabbit
Many of us are creatures of habit, whether we realize it or not. In fact, our bodies have an internal clock at the molecular level, called the circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythms are physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a daily cycle. They respond primarily to light and darkness in an organism’s environment. Sleeping at night and being awake during the day is an example of a light-related circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythms are found in most living things, including animals, plants, and many tiny microbes. Biological clocks are an organism’s innate timing device. They’re composed of specific molecules (proteins) that interact in cells throughout the body. Biological clocks are found in nearly every tissue and organ. Researchers have identified similar genes in people, fruit flies, mice, fungi, and several other organisms that are responsible for making the clock’s components. Biological clocks produce circadian rhythms and regulate their timing.
We even have a master clock in the brain, which coordinates all the biological clocks in a living thing and keeps the clocks in sync. In vertebrate animals, including humans, the master clock is a group of about 20,000 nerve cells (neurons) that form a structure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN. The SCN is located in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus and receives direct input from the eyes.
Circadian rhythms help determine our sleep patterns. The body’s master clock, or SCN, controls the production of melatonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy. It receives information about incoming light from the optic nerves, which relay information from the eyes to the brain. When there is less light—like at night—the SCN tells the brain to make more melatonin so you get drowsy. Researchers are studying how shift work as well as exposure to light from mobile devices during the night may alter circadian rhythms and sleep-wake cycles.
Rabbit Bearing Time
If we aren’t having to punch a time clock any longer, our sleep cycles may get out of whack. If we have children at home, who no longer have to be at the bus stop at a certain schedule, we may let them stay up longer. If we’re stressed as a family, we might all be staying up past our bedtime to snuggle more or to lose ourselves in social media or television. Messing with our inner rhythms isn’t good for our health, since these rhythms regulate our heart health, blood pressure, hunger and fullness, blood sugar, and inflammation levels, just to name just a few important reasons to spend seven to eight hours sleeping well.
Sleeping Bunny
Some ways you can get back on track with a healthy sleep schedule include:
limiting daytime naps (or avoiding them altogether)
refraining from caffeine past noon or at least a few hours prior to bedtime
going to bed at the same time each night
waking up at the same time every morning
sticking to your bedtime schedule during weekends and holidays
spending an hour before bed doing relaxing activities, such as reading, meditating, or taking a bath
avoiding heavy meals within a few hours before bedtime
refraining from using electronic devices right before bed
exercising regularly, but not in the evening hours close to bedtime
reducing alcohol intake
If this seems like too much to handle, on top of everything else this pandemic has thrown at us, bunny wisdom reminds us we don’t need to achieve perfection on the first go around. We merely need to go on to perfection. It’s the journey that’s more important than the destination.
Reading a Rabbit to Sleep
If we can’t stand it any more, maybe we should read some of the great literature from this period, such as Sinclair Lewis’ The Grapes of Wrath, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel, or A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression, by Zigleman and Coe. This last is a James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner. If we’ve always lived in a land of plenty, we can learn from those who had to use up, make do, and reuse. Today we call these virtues waste consciousness, resourcefulness, and repurposing.
The words may change, but the principles of a simple life remain the same. If you have a very small child or a babe in arms, I recommend reading your book aloud to them in stage voices. They’ll be mesmerized by the various sounds coming from your one mouth, and soon they’ll be off into la la land. They’ll hear more and varied words than usual, so they’ll have a better ear for new vocabulary when their time for speech appears. Plus you’ll get your reading goals in, you multitasking champion.
Some of us will continue to social distance for a while. The older population, as well as those with compromised immune systems will visit through the glass doors or through technology. In June, we rabbits might see some weddings, but with fewer people attending and socially distant or via social media, unlike the mass gatherings of yore. No more Hollywood productions for a while, but it’s not the ceremony that makes a wedding, but the love and commitment between two people that makes a bond endure.
Flag Day in the USA is June 14, so you get another day to fly the colors and see if your flag still passes muster for the upcoming 4th of July celebrations.
Flag Bunny
One of the largest events is the Summer Solstice on June 21, at Stonehenge, England. However, the 2020 summer solstice celebrations at Stonehenge have been cancelled because of the ban on mass gatherings prompted by the coronavirus. Traditionally about 10,000 to 20,000 people have gathered at the Neolithic monument in Wiltshire, on or around 21 June, to mark midsummer. English Heritage said it was cancelling the event “for the safety and wellbeing of attendees, volunteers and staff”. Senior druid King Arthur Pendragon said it was disappointing but unsurprising. The sunrise will instead be live-streamed on English Heritage’s social media. The link for virtual tours is at the bottom of the page and that site will go live for the solstice also. Just think, you can participate and not deal with the unwashed hoards or suffer the inadequate public facilities.
Stonehenge
Oh, and if you’re playing Pandemic Bingo, look for International Asteroid Day on June 30, which focuses on spreading the word of the planet’s imminent destruction (relax, it’s about a 1% chance) and helping fellow Earthlings prepare for a potential asteroid impact. What with murder bees, the advent of a strong hurricane season, and continued toilet paper shortages, this rabbit has got July fireworks on her calendar, if she lives that long.
Pandemic Bingo Card
Until next time, I remain an incurable optimist and wish all my Bunny Peeps
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and no one choked on a turkey bone or their uncle’s unsavory political opinions. I had a chat with my first cousin, who once again retold the traditional dinner time story of my succumbing to sleep with a turkey leg in my hand and my blonde curls down in my plate. I was two years old at our grandparents’ home and nearly seven decades have passed as I’ve heard her or my aunt tell this same story, so I just wait for it and laugh. It doesn’t represent who I am now, however, so I don’t dwell on it. It tells me more about their inadequacy than it relates to mine. This is a little rabbit comfort to any bunny reading this who’s still smarting from their past festive gathering and not looking forward to the upcoming Christmas feast.
There must be cookies!
We’re on to the great holiday season now. In the USA alone, we’ll celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, as well as the upcoming Winter Solstice. Some non religious folks will also celebrate Festivus, which is actually an offshoot from the tv series Friends. Since many people like to do Friendsgiving, they’re good to go for Festivus also. The symbol of light is predominant in Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. Christ is the light coming into the world, the oil in the lamp burning miraculously for eight days is the miracle of Hanukkah, and the colors of the Kwanzaa candles represent struggle, Hope, and the people. The Winter Solstice is also a commemoration of the shortest day of the year and a welcoming return of the sun to longer days.
We all journey toward the light.
Even though the season is marked by the spiritual nature of believers, the commercial emphasis of this season can be overwhelming. Moreover, Christmas sales begin earlier and earlier each year. While merchants once waited until Thanksgiving, and then pushed their date back to Halloween, they now have items for Christmas out as early as Labor Day. If you dislike climate change, aka global warming, consider the bane of “merchandising shift:” soon we’ll be bombarded by Christmas sales year round.
Perhaps we need to put a priority on what’s most important in our lives: • Do we need clothes which wear out quickly and can’t be given away because they aren’t useful? • Do we need new gadgets, if we’ll only get bored with them in a month? • Would more time together be better for us as a family? • Would books, learning new skills, or art or music lessons be a better gift? • Would a gift to the homeless shelter or local food pantry remind us more of our blessings?
Handmade cookies for gifting
Many strange and the usual holidays abound in December. From remembering the tragedy of AIDS and the hope for the living, to National Bacon Day, we can always find hope and comfort in the darkest days of December. An odd holiday is National Bathtub Day, which falls on Repeal Day. I happen to be old enough to have “known those who partook of bathtub gin.” This gin was the same as Ozark moonshine, just citified. However, Bathtub Day has nothing to do with hooch, but only about soapy suds and relaxing. Taking long, hot baths or showers is good for relaxing the muscles and opening up the sinuses.
If you haven’t shopped your heart or wallet out yet, Green Monday offers yet more discounts a mere week past Cyber Monday. Of course, if you received a gift during the year, but didn’t use it, you could always regift it to someone else! This is the idea behind National ReGifting Day. I like homemade cookies, since I can freeze them and eat a small treat every week or so. National Chocolate Covered Anything Day, National Chocolate Candy Day, Bake Cookies Day, and National Cookie Exchange Day all fall into this category.
Although National Christmas Tree Day falls on the 8th, the White House will light their great tree on the 5th, a tradition presidents since Calvin Coolidge have kept since 1923. The only times the tree wasn’t lit was during WWII, and the lighting also was delayed due to the death of President John F.Kennedy on November 22, until the thirty-day period of national mourning had passed. On December 22, President Lyndon Johnson, accompanied by First Lady Lady Bird Johnson and daughter Luci, opened the lighting ceremony saying, “Today we come to the end of a season of great national sorrow, and to the beginning of the season of great, eternal joy. He shared his hope that the nation would “not lose the closeness and the sense of sharing and the spirit of mercy and compassion, which these last few days have brought to us all.” Saint Nicholas Day reminds us the original St. Nick was honored for his gifts to the poor, rather than to children who already have a closet full of toys.
Strange holidays get celebrated to emphasize causes both silly and necessary. First the silly. What would we do without Ding a Ling Day, when one gets to do something silly, such as write “Monkey Day” on a friend’s calendar as a joke, but then they celebrate simians of every type from then on? Barbie and Barney Backlash Day is a 24 hour hiatus for parents so they can tell small children the song can’t be sung today. Instead Baby Shark goes on and on and on.
National Flashlight Day is always celebrated on the Winter Solstice, perhaps because it’s the shortest day of the year and the longest night. It’s always good to have a flashlight with you when you walk your four legged friend, or when you’re crossing poorly lit areas of the neighborhood. It also comes in handy to find lost objects underneath furniture and car seats. You might want to find a sturdy Box to put the gifts in for your local tradesmen, as was the custom back in England on Boxing Day, the holiday after Christmas. In the USA, most folks resort to tips or gift cards, since we don’t have hired help.
Find time for quiet as the days grow shorter
If every bunny makes it through the excitement of all the parades, sitting for a photo on the lap of a Santa or an Elf, and hasn’t lost their minds scrambling to pack two months worth of parties into the last two weeks of school before the whole bunny family packs up to travel over hill and dale to the grandparent bunny’s house, I suppose we could pay attention to Tick Tock Day, when we’re called to finish up our Round2It List. I’ll most likely roll mine over to 2020 and call it New Projects, because if I hadn’t gotten Round2It by now, it isn’t going to get done before New Year’s. I’ll toast the New Years entry with a glass and see every bunny back again.
Everyone have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, and a Prosperous Kwanzaa!
Joy and Peace, Cornelia.
December 1: World AIDS Day
December 2: National Mutt Day, Special Education Day, Cyber Monday
December 3: National Green Bean Casserole Day, Giving Tuesday
December 4: National Cookie Day, Santa’s List Day
December 5: Repeal Day, Bathtub Party Day, Day of the Ninja
December 6: St. Nicholas Day
December 7: Pearl Harbor Day, Letter Writing Day, National Cotton Candy Day
December 8: National Christmas Tree Day, Worldwide Candle Lighting Day, National Brownie Day
December 9: Christmas Card Day, Green Monday
December 10: National Lager Day
December 12: Gingerbread House Day, Ding-a-Ling Day, Poinsettia Day
December 13: National Ice Cream Day, National Cocoa Day, Free Shipping Day
December 14: Monkey Day
December 15: National Cupcake Day, Cat Herders’ Day
December 16: National Chocolate Covered Anything Day
December 16: Barbie and Barney Backlash Day, Boston Tea Party Day
December 17: National Maple Syrup Day
December 18: Bake Cookies Day, Answer the Phone Like Buddy the Elf Day
December 19: Holly Day, National ReGifting Day
December 20: National Sangria Day, National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day, Go Caroling Day
December 21: 1st Day of Winter, Humbug Day, National Flashlight Day, Super Saturday
December 22. National Cookie Exchange Day, Hanukkah begins
December 23: Festivus
December 24: Santa Claus Day, National Eggnog Day
December 25: Christmas
December 26: Kwanzaa, National Candy Cane Day, National Thank You Note Day, Boxing Day
December 27: National Fruitcake Day
December 28: Playing Card Day, National Chocolate Candy Day
December 29: Tick Tock Day
December 30: Bacon Day
December 31: National Champagne Day, New Year’s Eve
I’m late for November. As the White Rabbit once said, “I’m late for a very important date.” I usually tell folks I’m often late and occasionally great.
Daylight Saving Time is at Hand
Between Halloween and the Day of the Dead celebrations, this old rabbit has had too much fun. I’m not the party animal I was in my fluffy bunny days. Hot-tober dropped like a stone into a glacial lake as November brought our first true cold snap to these parts of my world. Brisk air always calls for the flu shot before the providers run out of their first batch of vaccines. Another delivery will come down the pike, but the flu will beat it before it arrives. I got mine just in time.
Revenge on Scary Monsters
“The time and tide wait for no one,” the ancient proverb tells us. As we approach the end of the year, the older ones among us may find time moving more quickly as we age. When I was a small child, the time between Halloween and Thanksgiving seemed interminable, and the days until Christmas were eternal. My sense of time was inversely proportional to my degree of interest in the date beyond. If I wanted it desperately, the time I waited was excruciatingly long. Now, time flies from morning to night, from day to day, and season to season. My decades are approaching escape velocity. I get the sense no matter how many decades I have left on this earth, they’ll be too short to accomplish all I hope to do.
Time Waits for No One
Time is a fourth dimension, some say. I meet those who need to “find something to do with my time,” as if it were empty and needed filling. It’s not the time that’s empty, but the person who needs filling. We are best filled when we give to others, especially to others who have less than we do, as in Emily Dickinson’s poem:
These Strangers in a foreign World
These Strangers, in a foreign World,
Protection asked of me —
Befriend them, lest Yourself in Heaven
Be found a Refugee —
Make a Place for the Stranger at the Table
CALENDAR FOR NOVEMBER
2—Day of the Dead
3—Daylight Saving Time Ends
15—National Clean Out Your Fridge Day—make room for the feast
21—National Stuffing Day—practice a week early to get it right!
28—Thanksgiving—if you don’t have family, invite friends, or feed the poor at a food pantry or the feed wildlife with seeds and nuts.
Cornie's Kitchen 