Day Ten.

I would like to start today's blog with a moment of silence in appreciation of the fact that school has resumed which means I have 6 whole hours to myself M-F until I go back to school.


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Amen.

So this morning I wanted to start off my selfie time right by not sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day and decided I would return to Iron Mountain and give it another go. I made my juice and blended it with a banana and some frozen fruit to make sure I had legit substance in my belly and off I went. It was really windy and the wind was blowing completely against me. It wasn't very long before I realized my body was not going to cooperate with the 6+ mile round trip hike I had hoped for. I can only assume it has something to do with not having had any good carbs in my diet thus causing a lack of energy. I am generally pretty capable of things like that but I knew better than to push myself this morning so I ended up going about a mile up then back and another mile down a little side trail. I would have kept going down the side trail except the further I walked and realized NO ONE was on the trail the more I began to think of episodes of "I Shouldn't Be Alive" about rattlesnake bites or cougar mauling and news stories about women out for a jog being murdered and left to die in the dirt. So I turned around, better safe than sorry. I did take some lovely pictures though! I have this ridiculous love of what I will call "small miracles", like insects, plants, deep sea creatures and the like. Something about the complexity of such things never ceases to amaze me as well as serving to remind me of the unsurpassed creativity of our Creator.

  Now that I am over the hump and in the juice thing without much struggle I feel like my head is free to think about all sorts of things. Mostly right now about continuing on in this lifestyle change and getting my family involved and excited, but I also have this renewed positivism about life in general. I actually caught myself thinking in depth about the motivational poster quote "Be the change you want to see in the world!" Now if you know me, this is SO out of character. I am a realist to the core and I will be the first to tell you "following your dreams" is nice, but probably really impractical. I just have never had a "YES WE CAN!" Rosie the Riveter/Obama sort of outlook on life, until now. I think it has come with my determination to follow through with the juicing. I have followed through with other things, (not a lot mind you), but this has been a legitimate test of overcoming physical desire by retraining my mind and I am doing it. It makes me feel like I really can not only achieve my own goals but also have an affect on others. I feel inspirational and it is a really good feeling.

I have also stepped up to a whole new level of holism and granola.

WARNING: This information may be TMI for those of you who just aren't into natural medicine or talking about vagina problems. 

So about 4 days into my juicing I felt like I was on the cusp of a yeast infection, something I have dealt with on less occasions than I have fingers. Apparently this is not uncommon when juicing, considering the amount of sugar you are getting from fruit and the fact that yeast feeds on sugar. I didn't want to take anything, again because it seemed counterproductive to put junk in my body whilst trying so hard to get junk out. I figured I would give it a day or two and see where I was. Nothing got out of hand but I wasn't really getting better either so I went to a whole foods place and bought some natural yeast fighting pills. I figured this was a good start, but a large portion of treating that sort of problem is less through the mouth and more in the actual vagina. So I did what this blog has made strikingly apparent that I always do, I googled.
I googled and I found this: garlic. The first lady just straight stuck a peeled garlic clove inside herself and fished it out later, which did not sound like something I was interested in. The next person mentioned a mesh tea bag which I don't have. And then I found it....peel the garlic, cut the ends off and with a needle and thread, thread through the center of the garlic a few times and knot it off so what you have is like a garlic tampon. Then, do what you do with a tampon and go bout your bidness. It advised to start the procedure in the evening because magically you can taste the garlic IN YOUR MOUTH while its marinating and munching down on yeast in your vag.
So I totally did it. Left it in all night and put a new one in this morning. It is an odd concept but it is a WHOLE lot better than that nasty over the counter mess you would normally buy. It also seems to be working so I plan on keepin it up till it is totally better. I hope you all know how miraculous it is that I am even SHARING this information because NO ONE wants to talk about sad vaginas. The fact of the matter is that yeast lives in your body at all time, and certain foods, meds and other things can cause an overgrowth. In fact, we are all probably suffering from candida (yeast) overgrowth but have not experienced outward symptoms that we recognize as such. If you want to know more about the common symptoms of candida overgrowth and how to test yourself Dr.Oz will fill you in here.
If you have stuck it out till now, you are awesome. It is time for me to make some juice so I am gonna mosey off my soapbox and return to reality. God Bless YOUR day!!!

PS. I emailed the Pastor of the church, which was not the guy I met yesterday, and he emailed me back right away with his phone number asking if I would please call him. I did and he explained what seemed to have been lost in translation in the conversation I had with the guy there. He was really apologetic and quite lovely so I am gonna check it out next Sunday.