Mayan’s last official Spring Break and she decided that she wanted to visit my parents who were spending some time in Arizona.

Since we used to live there, she has an attachment to the Phoenix area and spending time with my parents is something that she always loves to do! She was able to visit and spend time with the little girl who used to live across the street and her best friend forever, Katie as well as her Big Brothers Big Sisters sister Jen.

My mom sent me a couple pictures that I wanted to share:

Dad and Mayan

Mom and Mayan

Mayan with her "big sister" Jen

I might have another picture or two to share in the next few days.

The last time she was in Arizona was four years ago when I took her, along with Sunny and Mel, to Phoenix for Spring Break their senior year of high school. We had such a good time. I am forever grateful that we were able to spend that time together.

1. The sound of mowers and landscaping activity. It sounds like summer.

2. Open doors and fresh Spring air.

3. Driving with the windows down. Music turned up.

Because I need this.

Today I am grateful for:

1. My daughter, Mayan, who reminds me to keep breathing. Each and every day.

2. Sunshine.

3. Bacon.

A friend of mine called me just an hour before a nutrition talk at the local library. I had forgotten about the talk and was going to stay home, but she wanted to know if we could ride together. She is really good at getting me out the door!! And I’m glad that she did.

I didn’t know what to expect from the talk, but it ended up turning my thoughts (and life) upside down.

“Nutrition Series: The Importance of Dietary Fat”

Ask ten people what they believe is the healthiest type of diet and eight of them will say that a “low-fat diet” is the healthiest. This dietary myth has been perpetuated by the government, the food industry, and conventional medicine since the 1950′s. But this entrenched idea is based on incomplete observational evidence and bad science. This presentation will explain how fats work in the body (yes, just a teeny bit of biochemistry) so you can see for yourself how important dietary fat is to your health.  Ms. Westover will help you determine which healthy fats you should be including in your diet and which fats you should be avoiding.

Low-fat is a dietary myth? It appears to be so. I have been reading (googling, podcast listening, lecture watching) like crazy ever since, starting with Why We Get Fat, and What to Do About It by Gary Taubes as well as his Good Calories, Bad Calories. I’ve read Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Mary Enig and Sally Fallon and Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats. I have become familiar with the Weston A. Price Foundation.

Things are finally making sense to me. I have been a dieter since the age of 12, repeatedly and ultimately unsuccessfully. Losing and then gaining more and more weight. Feeling like a failure. Probably messing up my metabolism and insulin resistance in the process. Several years ago, tired of dieting and gaining weight, I stepped off the diet train…and stopped gaining. What I’ve learned recently is that it wasn’t me, I wasn’t the failure.

I have made some big changes in my diet (but I still refuse to be “on a diet” ever again!), including adding virgin coconut oil as a supplement (in the nutrition talk Ms. Westover mentioned the connection between coconut oil and the reversing and/or halting the progression of Alzheimer’s. Which caught my attention and since then I’ve read many good things about it, so I’ve decided to make it a part of my life for now.), and plan to make more changes in the future. I’ve lost some weight, I am not feeling deprived. My blog reader is bulging at the seams with all the new blogs that I’m reading.

It’s been an interesting journey.

I don’t know where I will be in a month or in a year, but I thought that I would share a bit of what’s up with me NOW….today.

Also, on another subject: It was brought to my attention this afternoon that there was a glitch in my blog. I think I have it fixed, but my apologies for not noticing sooner!

Things have been quiet around here. Which is good!

It wasn’t me. As usual.

Mayan (Starr), Sarah (Sookie) and friends spent a recent weekend in Estes Park and went snowshoeing in the mountains. I pinched a couple pictures off of Facebook to share:

The crew! Mayan is wearing the pink hat. Sarah in the blue.

The view!

I started this blog just over three years ago. I thought that it might help me find a voice, or just speak the one that already existed but I was afraid to share, and as a desperate attempt to “get over” the death of Sunny. Cheap therapy.

So far, I don’t think that I have truly achieved either one of those goals. I do have things to say (I mean REALLY say), every day, but I don’t. I do take a stand once in a while, against hate, against intolerance, for love. As for Sunny, things are better, I feel the load lightening, but it is oh-so-very-slow.

Mostly what I have found are some awesome people who I am blessed to have met, who have shared with me, who have cried with me, who have laughed with me and shared the last three years of my daughter Mayan (Starr), growing up, experiencing college, finding her place (so far!) in this world, all with a great weight on her back. And the joy and support her friends Lexie (Skye) and Sarah (Sookie) have been to both of us.

After stumbling a bit with my erratic posting this Fall, I have decided that the blog is feeling like pressure. A should do, that is weighing heavily on me.

So, I am taking a break. A mental break. It is time to focus my “worries” on other things. Making art. My health. Finding me. Because as much as I love this blog and, even more, the connections that I’ve made, I feel like I have let “me” slide in the process.

I may become a once or twice a week blogger. I may just ditch the project right here. Or…I may come back to it seven days a week! I just don’t know. I might just post again tomorrow.

What I do know is that I am taking my mental “should” away from blogging. I am letting go of the stress of days when I have absolutely NOTHING to share!!