Diet "Experts"!

After reading a lot of books full of advice about how to lose weight and be healthy, I've become very worried about the people who call themselves diet "experts." They all have different opinions, and they all claim that their way is the only way to live a healthy life and avoid leaving behind a fat, ugly corpse when you die prematurely of some hideous disease. But since everyone has a different opinion, there's no way to know which one is right. And they all seem pretty ridiculous and impractical in their own way.

I just finished reading yet another book that promises to help me get skinny and healthy, as long as I follow the authors' program. Unfortunately, I got to the middle of the book before realizing that their actual agenda was to convince everyone to stop eating meat, dairy, and all other animal products. Apparently, if I eat nothing but fruits, vegetables, and soybeans that are molded into fake meat. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Their suggested menu for breakfast: Eat a piece of fruit, then another one, then another one. Apparently no one told these women that bagels were invented to give people incentive to get out of bed in the morning.

There are lots of other so-called diet experts who claim that the vegan diet recommendations from the skinny book are plain wrong. I receive a natural health email newsletter every day, and the guy who writes it says that meat, dairy, and eggs are important to a healthy diet. Unfortunately, the suggestions about how to eat these things are a little, um, unconventional. He thinks we should eat eggs, but only raw ones. (Yick!) Milk is fine, but it has to be un-pasteurized, which can contain bacteria that could make people sick. Some fruits are OK, but many are a problem because they contain sugar, and they all have to be organic. Veggies are very good, as long as they're organic and raw. Oh, and those bagels I want for breakfast are out of the question.

There are other diets floating around out there, including the high-protein, low-carb variety and the low-fat type. Allegedly, both are the only way to lose weight, keep the weight off, and become healthy. And both completely contradict each other, not to mention the skinny diet and the raw egg diet.

So what can we eat while abiding by all the guidelines in these various diet plans? Eggs? No. Meat? Be serious. Milk and cheese? Not a chance. A cookie? Don't be ridiculous. Blueberries? Nope. Which leaves us with raw organic spinach and maybe a carrot on your birthday. Yum. Thank goodness I spent the time reading all these diet books so I could get such excellent, practical advice. I think it's time to just give up and order a pan pizza. It might not be so good for my body, but it's excellent for my spirit.

Receipts!

My husband recently accepted a work transfer to Georgia. Our move provides enough material for infinite Daily Fret blogs all by itself since we've both lived in Illinois our entire lives, and we don't know anyone in Georgia. But we'll get to that later. Later, as in some day when I'm not buried under a ton of garbage in every room in my house, trying to clean stuff out and pack. Which is why I haven't written a blog in maybe two weeks.

Anyway, today's Fret isn't about Georgia or the fact that I don't particularly care for peaches or the impending need for me to drive 12 hours in my car with a bunch of angry, crying cats in the backseat the whole way. Today's problem is that I can never find anything I'm looking for! We're preparing to sell our house, so I have to look back through my file cabinets and boxes of papers and random piles of paperwork stashed under furniture to find details about this place so we can offer it for sale. Because we're being relocated through my husband's company, we need to tell them how much we paid for our house, what's wrong with it, what kind of remodeling we've done over the past 10 years, and whether the place smells like cats.

In order to buy a new house in Georgia, we also have to dig up every bit of financial data we've ever come in contact with, including tax forms, pay stubs, and written receipts from the Salvation Army collection guy who we gave a dollar to last Christmas. Fortunately, I've got most of this stuff because I'm a packrat. Sadly, there's always one piece of paper - a vital piece of paper that's the key to every other piece - that I can't find. On Thursday, for instance, I literally spent from noon to 4 p.m. looking for a property tax bill from 2010. Oh, I had 2009 and 2011, but I needed 2010 and couldn't find it for 4 hours. It took so long because I had every other piece of paper from 2010, and I needed to search under them in order to find what I needed. The online version of the bill didn't have the one little detail that I needed, so I had to search. And eventually discover that it was where it should have been, but the paperclip had fallen off, so the page had gotten stuffed to the bottom of the tax envelope.

And it's not  just home-related stuff that goes missing. Today I had to find a receipt for my son's computer so he could get warranty service. We bought the extended, in-home warranty, so we're going to use it! But first I have to spend 2 hours looking for the receipt. It should have been in email, but it wasn't. Every other email was there. I have about 200 junk mails about buying low cost ink cartridges alone, but can I find the thing I need? Of course not.

So the moral of this story is that you can save 1000 tiny pieces of paper and have them filed clearly in just the right place, but the one you need won't be there when you need it. It makes me think that I should just throw all paperwork and receipts away immediately. Then I'll at least know that I don't have what I need, and I don't have to waste hours searching for it.

Daylight Savings Time - The Sequel!

I've always hated Daylight Savings Time, and now I've got scientific evidence that it's a plague on humanity. Waking up in the pitch dark to change the time on all my clocks is more than an inconvenience. Turns out, it's actually dangerous.

According to an article in the LA Times, hazards ranging from heart attacks to traffic accidents increase dramatically on the Monday following the time change. This "spring forward" nonsense strips us of an hour of much-needed sleep, which increases stress on our bodies. Sleep experts (yes, there are sleep experts) say it can take some people up to 3 weeks to get used to the new time.  http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-daylight-saving-time-health-dangers-20130311,0,2861449.story

So be safe out there because apparently everyone's half asleep.

Daylight Savings Time!

I worry about daylight savings time all year. It totally messes with my life. Just as the sun is finally starting to rise at a decent time in the morning, the government swoops in and steals an hour from us. And if they can steal one hour, when who's to say they can't steal 2, 3, or 5 hours? Before we know it, the sun isn't rising until 11 o'clock in the morning and it's setting at midnight.

So now, starting tomorrow, I've got to get used to new times for everything from when I go to bed to mealtimes. And what about having to spend most of Sunday searching the house for clocks that need to be changed? This is the time of year when I, like so many other women, find myself asking: Why do I have so many watches?

Drones!

Time was we had to worry about drones they were worker bees that might sting. But now it's even worse. Today, drone is also a word for unmanned aircraft that the US government says can be used to kill American citizens without a trial or conviction. Call me crazy, but I prefer bees. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/05/us-drone-strike_n_2813857.html

As long as the government believes a person is a threat, he/she is a fair target. Never mind the Constitutional guarantee of a trial for anyone accused of a crime. The message is that our pesky Constitution is always getting in the way of good government, so it's easier to just ignore it. Again, I prefer bees. At least when they violate your Constitutional rights, it's only because they can't read.

In addition to the threat of death from above by these drone aircraft, there's another reason to fear drones. A airline pilot claims he spotted a drone near New York's JFK airport. It was 1500 feet in the air, which means it was high enough and close enough to the airport to possibly interfere with airplanes. If a drone were to be sucked into an engine, it could result in the engine malfunctioning and a possible crash. That has happened in the past when birds have gotten caught in airplane engines. It's potentially fatal for people in the plane, and it's not too healthy for the birds, either.

Sinkholes!

Give us this day our daily fret about something brand new: Sinkholes! Some poor guy in Florida goes to bed and the next thing you know, his bedroom is sucked into the earth! Who knew that could happen? Don't they check for that kind of stuff before they build a house? Are we all at risk, or is this horrifying phenomenon unique to Florida? After all, Florida does have its share of horrifying phenomena, like alligators on golf courses and waiting 2 hours in July sun to ride the Teacups. And don't get me started on the crimes against humanity I've seen Florida drivers commit.

So now we not only have to fear threats from above, like airplane parts falling from the sky on us (refer to that episode of the series Shameless if you don't know what I mean), and threats on the ground, like Florida drivers, but now we have to worry about the earth swallowing us up for no reason.

Apparently some people knew about this nightmare because I'm right now listening to a song by the Drive By Truckers in which they mention "bury his body in the old sinkhole." Maybe we should start taking song lyrics more seriously because they hold hints to the true threats we're facing every day. Do you suppose all those singers who have covered the song Landslide are trying to tell us something?