Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Carb Control Works Again Something that just happened makes me wonder how often low carb diets "stop working" for people because they don't realize the extent of their carb creep. The scale and the clothes-o-meter told me last week that I was gaining weight. I had to face the idea that I can't eat peanut M&Ms without gaining. weight. Just by cutting out my few handfuls of M&Ms every day, I'm down four pounds. That doesn't sound like much, but on me, it makes the difference between having a flat belly and having the beginning of a pot belly. What really struck me, though, was how much better I felt. Once again, I can run on six hours' sleep. My head feels clearer and I've started on projects I meant to do months ago. A coworker happened to give up the M&Ms at the same time and noticed how much better she felt, too. As she put it, you know all that sugar has to be bad for you if you feel so much better without it. Who Says Thanksgiving

...I've had it backwards all these years. I'm not exploiting [chickens]. They're safe, happy, warm and fed. I'm the one who's miserable....Chickens have gotten humans to work for them. -Lierre Kieth on feeding her chickens on a frozen January morning For seventeen years, my garage has been accumulating spiders, dust and junk. I've been dodging nails sticking out of the wall in near darkness. Yet after all that time, I spent the weekend cleaning it out and refurbishing it. I'm not moving, I haven't gotten more stuff to store in there, and it hasn't become a rat's nest (not literally, anyway). No, I'm getting it ready for chickens: chickens exploiting humans, indeed. When the chickens move in, they'll need a way to get from the garden into their new condo. To that end, I took off the north window, ripped off two layers of screen with a hammer and smashed the louvers off. (It was just as well--the sill and part of the window framing wer