Lazy Sunday Afternoon at the Ocoee

Josh and I spent late Sunday afternoon lazing at the Blue Hole down by the Whitewater Centre. It was so relaxing...

^ the upper was flowing today!

^ josh at the whitewater centre

^ site of the 1996 Olympics

^ we stopped for the view at Boyd's Gap

^ at Lake Ocoee on the way back

^ the bottom of my mason jar... mmmm hard cider!

May and June 2013

Whooaaaaa! It's been over a month since my last post! How the heck did time go by so fast?! Well, I'm happy to say that I've made strides in my personal life this past month. I made a big move, started a new job, and have been embracing life with an open, thankful heart. It's never been so satisfying.

I now work right near the Ocoee River in southeast Tennessee. It's so refreshing being by the mountains and rivers... nature's beauty definitely puts things in perspective.

This past week I drove to Manchester, TN, (near Nashville) to volunteer at Bonnaroo, a huge 4-day music festival. This year it sold out, with over 80,000 tickets sold. The best part about it? (well... there's more than one...) I got in for free! Yep- volunteers get free tickets! I met the most amazing people living in the volunteer camping area. It was SUCH a fun time of community and great music.

And now I'm in the Atlanta area to visit my mom and Alex. It's Packing Central here, as there's less than 3 weeks left before the Big Move!  Here are some pics from the past few weeks! :)

^ saying goodbye to Lin and his family.

Josh and I cooked them an Italian meal.

^ Josh bought me roses for our 2nd anniversary. :)

^ volunteer check-in at Bonnaroo!!

^ the mushroom fountain at Bonnaroo 2013!

^ Paul McCartney in concert

^ Nicolas Cage showed up at The National

^ some of us cut onions with goggles.

You know who you are.

^ SUMMER FUN ~ ~ ~

Gearing up for a busy week! I am so thankful that I got to spend this past weekend with Kristin Mueller and her wonderful family~ celebrating her graduation and also her dad's graduation from Richmont Graduate School with his counseling degree! Yesterday I came home to spend Mother's Day with my beautiful mother. We had a delicious steak lunch before Dad jetted off to the airport, Randy and Lin jetted off to a Tim McGraw concert, and mom raced off to work. So, naturally, I baked cookies and had a dance party at the house last night. Hehehe.

Onward and forward, my friends.
It's gonna be a great week. :)

GuanYin

GuanYin 观音 ~ Goddess of Mercy in Chinese Buddhism
 ~ She who perceives the world's lamentations

Art to Ponder (Andy Farkas)

This is my favourite piece from an art gallery in Asheville, NC. It struck me as simplistically beautiful when I first saw it, so much that tears welled up in my eyes. The artist is Andy Farkas, an Asheville local. On the painting is a small, silver inscription that reads:

Afterwards, he cried.
And he didn't know why.

I think it's absolutely beautiful. Maybe I'm just at a point in my life where I really relate to the fox, who has just released something into the air. Actually, the Saturday that I browsed the gallery was truly the FIRST day in a very, very long time that I was able to fully let go of some things that had been weighing me down (in both a personal and inter-personal way) in hopes that forgiveness and not worrying would take me to a higher place.

And it has. I am moving forward in love, faith, self-respect, and forgiveness.
It's truly a beautiful thing.

I promise, no matter what happens, we'll be alright.

This is my inspiration for being myself without caring too much about what other ppl think. ;) Haha.

Pretty nice weekend- plenty of sun and warm temperatures. (If only it'd stay like this, eh!) Today I went for a nice hike at Kennesaw Mountain and ended the evening with jumping in the hot-tub with my mom. I'm considering doing a 3-wk trip with some Couchsurfers who are planning a trip out west. It would be camping and seeing some national parks in Utah, Nevada, and California in May. I also applied to volunteer at this year's Bonnaroo festival... so fingers crossed for that!

Goats

I was listening to the radio at 4:30 AM, on my way back from dropping Lin off at the airport. (He's flying to China for Spring Break.) The morning show featured a piece of interesting news from Tennessee about a woman who called 9-1-1 after hearing bloodcurdling screams coming from outside her home. Turns out it was just a neighbour's goat. LOL.

Then, on the subject of goats and their screaming capabilities, the radio show played this audio clip... which absolutely made my day. So hilarious. So spot-on.

Thank goodness I proofread my emails. Almost sent one to a prospective employer saying "i attacked my resume..."

It's almost as bad as a text i sent to an ex-boyfriend: "I love you tom." Thanks autocorrect, his name wasn't tom. That one took some explaining.

We're Moving (soon)!

Well, my title may be premature. What I meant to say is that our house is up for sale! We'll be moving in the summer, sometimes between May and July. My parents are looking at houses in Newport News / Hampton, which is right on the Chesapeake Bay and the James River. I've never been up there so I can't wait to visit! My dad's job is there, so he's already been living up there for a year.

We've had so many house showings since we listed it last Friday... which means keeping every square inch impeccably clean. Every time I have to leave for work I leave myself ten extra minutes to tidy everything. But I love having a clean space! Here's a few pics of my room:

In other news, almost everyone in my household was sick last weekend. (I was sick for 8 days... ugh!) We had a super lazy weekend, napping during the times we didn't have to run off to the nearest coffee shop so realtors could show our house. We're all getting better, although this yo-yo weather here isn't helping. One days it's shorts weather and the next day it's winter jacket time. I have summer fever so bad!!! Take me to the beach!

And, in other random news, look at the size of this Golden Graham I found! Whoa!!

Something Borrowed Quote

Interesting thought/quote:

"And suddenly, all at one, it is clear to me why I won't force Dex's hand. Why I say nothing. It all comes down to expectations... In short, I have no real faith in my own happiness. And then there is Darcy. She is a woman who believes that things should fall into her lap, and consequently, they do. They always have. She wins because she expects to win. I do not expect to get what I want, so I don't. And I don't even try."
-Rachel White (character in Something Borrowed, a novel by Emily Giffin)

This work I worked almost 60 hours. And I'm exhausted! About half of that was spent chasing after a 2-year old (and his two brothers, yikes!), who is super cute but has the energy levels of about five children. lol. Here are a few pics from this week. :)

^ Left: at the park, playing on the choo-choo;

Right: Peyton exclaimed, "Doggie!!" and sat on this little lamb in our kitchen.

^ how I'm relaxing tonight after work

Photo: March 12, 2013

This photo is from when I went up to visit Josh last week. :)

A Visit from some Family :D

Taking an early-morning Saturday walk with the dogs... these are my cousins, Vanessa and Jessica, visiting with my Uncle John & Aunt Char from the Toronto area. They stopped by for a visit on their way back from a Florida vacation for March Break. :)

This is the flag of Friesland, a province in northern Holland, where my dad's parents both grew up. I've been growing more interested in my Dutch roots and want to delve into the language and history of both sides of my family. Today I bought a book of Dutch phrases, which was been useful (and funny) to go through. I also looked up my grandfather's (my dad's dad) obituary today and researched his hometown in Friesland. It turns out that Drogeham is a village of 1,600 people (current population!). Wow! It's still a mostly agrarian place (my grandfather was a farmer) and the language spoken there is a dialect of West Frisian. Although most people in Holland can speak Dutch, the official language, the people in Friesland have their own language. So my father's parents, although from the same country as my mom's parents, can still converse in a Dutch dialect (Frisian) that isn't understood by my mother's parents.   Just an interesting tidbit today. :)

To This Day... TedTalk

Such an incredible talk & poem... I highly recommend watching this. It's inspiring, insightful, one part funny and one part tear-jerking. Well worth every second of watching. :)

~lol @ 2:37 of the talk

~wow: "I will love myself despite the ease with which I lean toward the opposite."

~quote: She was eight years old, our first day of grade three when she got called ugly ... To this day, despite a loving husband, she doesn't think she's beautiful because of a birthmark that takes up a little less than half her face. Kids used to say, "She looks like a wrong answer that someone tried to erase, but couldn't quite get the job done." And they'll never understand that she's raising two kids whose definition of beauty begins with the word "Mom," because they see her heart before they see her skin, because she's only ever always been amazing.

Happy International Women's Day! The best day of the year! :)

Taking a break from keto for a few days. I just need chocolate. :)

Quad Time ♫

Take an 8-minute break from whatever you're doing. Close your eyes, relax, and enjoy the music as it gradually builds into something wonderful. This song brings so much joy to my heart; I can't explain it.

I will not apologise for who I am and what I think. I'm sorry, I just can't.

The Perfect Sunday Afternoon

This past week has been a difficult one, so last night I resolved to have a great Sunday. I discovered that the city's art museum was hosting an exhibition called Frida & Diego and that a theatre just down the road was showing Oscar-nominated short films.

So, this morning, after making a delicious breakfast of Canadian bacon and eggs for everyone, I set off for my first stop: church. It's been a while since I've stepped foot into a church service, so I was a little (okay, a lot) apprehensive and worried that my cynicism would ruin my enjoyment of the morning... but I actually had a great time. Although I didn't know much of the music (yay for "modern worship" songs that all sound the same yet are different enough to not be able to sing along), the pastor's message was wonderfully inspiring and just what I needed to hear. He talked about great things coming from mustard seeds, and how we must be diligent in pursuing our dreams and goals. It was a stark reminder that our culture of IMMEDIACY will render us unable to accomplish anything, which is exactly what I'm afraid of in my own life. I have such high expectations of myself that I'm too afraid to move forward.

^ decorations for missions week

There were also two women --Maryam and Marziyeh-- from Iran who were interviewed at the end of the service. (I think it had been Missions Month at the church.) They had been in prison in Iran for distributing Bibles, and spoke about their experiences in one of Iran's most notorious prisons where most of the "free thinkers" (religious, political, medical, etc) were kept. They experienced loneliness, losing inmates to execution by the State, fear of rape and torture, and were constantly interrogated. Due to international support from Amnesty International, the United Nations, and several other organisations, these women were finally freed. The amazing thing is that they are still interested in missions work and human rights in their home country!

Read an interview on Elam / This was Amnesty's page on them / See their upcoming book.

My second stop was the High Museum of Art in Midtown. I had to go sans my museum-buddy Anna Rich, who, ever since our trip to Scotland (most notably Edinburgh and its endless amounts of museums, which I dreaded at the time) has been coaxing me into becoming more of an art enthusiast. I was really excited to see work by Frida Kahlo ever since we learned about her and Rivera in my Gr. 10 Spanish class. I spent all of last night researching and watching videos on them, re-familiarising myself with their stories. Kahlo's work intrigues me because not only was she entirely self-taught, she painted a lot of pieces that represented her personal suffering: her spinal injury, miscarriages, and tumultuous relationship with her husband Diego Rivera. Their political views are also deeply interesting to me.

Here were my two favourite paintings from the exhibit, one from each Diego and Rivera.

I'll tell you about my third stop, the Midtown Art Cinema, the next time I post. :)

Do We Value the Feminine?

"Thousands of years ago, that which was female, and all its manifestations, was honoured and revered. The female side of God, in the form of the Goddess, was worshipped. The spirit of the feminine was recognised as the creative life force of the earth (a nurturing Mother figure).

Women [now] live in a society where what is masculine, linear, rational, and logical is considered superior to what is feminine, circular, intuitive, and emotional. Today's woman is a round peg trying desperately to fit into a square hole in order to survive and flourish."

- Anita Johnston, PhD (Author of Eating in the Light of the Moon, which uses ancient myths and folktales to explore underlying issues of hunger, being a woman, and self confidence.)

★Cait's note: This is such a huge issue in society and there NEEDS to be more discussion about this. We are living in masculine world, where women are valued based on their physical appearance, sex appeal, and ability to fill multiple, diverse roles all at once. No wonder so many women struggle with self-confidence issues. Society needs balance between masculinity and femininity.

 

That wolf is such a badass. 

This song is the reason I got out of bed this morning.

"Good things can never last" ♫ ♥

Get Lost in the Music

I love this picture... and it makes an awesome desktop background :)

Labrinth ft. Emeli Sandé

The only thing I can post after this incredibly shitty day is a song. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Feminism and masculinity: Stereotypes hurt everyone

One of the many ways that the patriarchy hurts both women and men is to typecast us into tiny boxes that restrict our fully realized expression as people.

If we say that “men think with their head, just not the one on their shoulders,” we are not only confining men and their motivations to a tiny box, but we are reinforcing to men that it is, in fact, okay to allow themselves to be led solely by their sex drive.

If we ever hope to realize a more positive masculinity, though, we must leave behind these insulting generalizations about the nature of men. 

Just as we must never excuse the misogyny of intimate partner abuse by saying that men are violent by nature, we must be careful never to excuse other forms of sexism by saying that men are slaves to sexual desire. It’s time we hold men to the high standard that our cognition deserves.

- Jamie Utt (male) ~ article link

My Latest Read

"Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History", written by Florence Williams.

A fantastic, insightful read so far. If you're even mildly interested in learning about evolutionary anatomy, social changes and influences on how we view breasts, and how everyday toxic chemicals are affecting the mammary and reproductive health of not only women but men, too... then this book is definitely worthwhile.

The back-cover synopsis of the book starts out with: "Did you know that breast milk contains substances similar to cannabis? Or that it's sold on the Internet for 262 times the price of oil? Feted and fetishized, the breast is changing. Breasts are getting bigger, arriving earlier, and attracting newfangled chemicals. Increasingly, the odds are stacked against us in the struggle with breast cancer, even among men. What makes breasts so vulnerable?"

This bookis an engaging narrative written in an informing-yet-witty (and humourous, at times!) way. It's a bit long, at over 320 pages, but it's worth every minute. Right now I'm on the chapter called "Toxic Assets: The Growing Breast", and it ties into Rachel Carson's research back in the 1970s. BPA and other xenoestrogens are a huge focus in this chapter, and I'd like to share some of the facts with you.

~ BPA is an artificial estrogen --called a xenoestrogen-- that was developed in the 1930s to prevent miscarriages in women. It failed to work as that... but was then used in the chemical industry to strengthen plastics.
~ BPA is a byproduct of refining petroleum (aka CHEAP to use and add to everything from food packaging to grocery receipts to dental sealants)
~ One dose of BPA to lab mice effectively damaged THREE generations. The same appears to be true in humans, meaning our chemical exposure starts much earlier than in the womb and lasts much later than death.
~ BPA alters the way mammary glands grow and respond to later threats.
~ Age-old saying: "The dose makes the poison." False: Even minuscule amounts of exposure can cause severe problems. What are these associated problems?
~ Early-in-life exposure to BPA can lead to:
        • early puberty
        • lower sperm counts
        • changes in mating behaviour
        • predisposition to obesity
        • increased risk of breast and prostate cancers
        • increased risk of miscarriages

We are crippling both sexes at once with our chemical exposure. Whether we know it or not, toxic ingredients in household cleaning products and even in the lining of our food products (canned goods included!) are altering the hormones in our bodies and introducing environmental toxins in our breast milk. It's extremely disheartening that corporate America (and the government) choose to turn a blind eye to human health in favour of high profits and low regulatory control over these profitable industries.

Quote of the Day

The soul attracts that which it secretly harbours,
That which it loves, and also that which it fears.
It reaches the height of its cherished aspirations,
It falls to the level of its unchastened desires.

And circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.

-James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

Happy Chinese New Year

On Saturday, I went to Atlanta's Chinatown with Lin and my mom. We had a grand ol' time sampling different Chinese treats and walking around the [small] Chinatown plaza. Overall it was a great walk down memory lane without the permanence of buying a plane ticket to ZhongGuo 中国 (China). Here some pics! :)

More to come...

Two Important Quotes for Today

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

Randoms

Above: Shallow advertising: The reason why I don't watch the superbowl (aside from the fact that I detest football). Women aren't possessions or commodities. Stop fueling the problem, people!
Below: This picture below captures a really lovely quote (in my opinion). :)

Crazy Canines :)

^ sibling love

MSG, the hidden ingredient

I know I flip between many different topics on my blog-- from recent adventures (hence the blog's name) to thoughts, quotes, new articles, and songs I like. This time it's what I did today and a note about a toxic ingredient in our food (MSG).

I hope you're all having a great weekend. Here it's been a bit nippy and rainy. As we grew up saying in my hometown, it's "spitting out" -- meaning "it's raining lightly". Today I babysat the most adorable little boy, who was about two and a half years old and FULL of endless amounts of energy! He would leap and dive across couches and run around the house, throwing basketballs and molding playdough and wanting cereal and running to the neighbours' to run around with their dog. Needless to say, I was WORN OUT by the time his dad came home! (Here's a cute picture of him playing with Callie).

The main focus of this post is monosodium glutamate, better known as MSG. I became quite familiar with this ingredient in China, as the Chinese use MSG instead of salt in all their cooking. In fact, I spent months looking for real salt in grocery stores in Zhuzhou... checking the "foreign" grocery store and other places I thought might carry it.

“你门有没有盐?" (Do you have salt?) I would ask, only to be pointed to an entire shelf of MSG packages. I was faced with the same impostor every. single. time.

Why was I trying to avoid MSG? Because it's a cheap chemical compound -- a toxic amino acid, to be exact -- that can have negative effects on the human (and animal) body and brain, specifically the nervous system. Remember the negative hype about aspartame when it first hit shelves? It's another toxic amino acid... discovered by scientists trying to create a fertilizer. Not exactly something we want to ingest, right?

Many low-fat and fat-free foods contain MSG, along with countless other foods. And why don't we know it most of the time? Because food companies disguise the ACTUAL ingredients when they create their ingredient lists. (Surprise, surprise. Big corporations don't give a crap about the people who buy and eat their products!) How can we really know what's in the food we're eating?

Well, for starters, we can learn how to decipher the ingredient lists. Did you know that companies have hundreds of different names for MSG and compounds that include MSG? As a rule of thumb, don't consume foods that include ingredients you can't pronounce. And the longer the ingredient list, the more dangerous the food product is. Basic is better and safer!

Second, beware of the following ingredients, as they contain MSG:

amino acids
autolyzed yeast
citric acid
glutamate
glutamic acid
hydrolyzed protein
monopotassium glutamate
monosodium glutamate
natural flavors
protein
whey protein concentrate

This renders a lot of "health foods" unsafe. If you don't believe me, just check the labels of a few items  in your pantry. I'm not trying to be Negative Nancy or Perfectionist Patty (lol), since it seems almost impossible to fully rid ourselves of chemicals in our food... But, we sure as heck can try!

If you're interested in reading about the other substitute names for MSG in foods, here's a helpful resource.