You and you

How often do you hear people (or yourself) say such phrases – No one cares about me. No one loves me.

I am here to tell you that this is untrue. There’s always someone who cares about you, even when the whole world seems against you. That person is you. Allow me to elaborate.

Question: What is you?

As it turns out, at any given point of time there are two forms of you. The first form is the sum total of your life experiences, your values, your work and whatever makes you the unique person that you are. This is the steady state you.

The second form of you is the mental state that you are in at this moment. You may be in panic at this moment as you are about to lose your job, or sad because your pet is sick, or thrilled because your favorite soccer team won. While this is also you, it does not represent the actual you. This is a transient you. It is your state of mind only today and now, but does not represent the steady state you.

The steady state you is the actual you. The transient you feels more real, but in a few days, or even as early as tomorrow or later today, it will change to a different state. Even if the transient you takes months to get out of this current issue, it is still transient in the overall timeline of your life.

The mistake we make is that we think that the transient us is the real us. This is not true.

So why is this a useful bit of information?

First: Because understanding that the transient you is not alone and not all powerful will bring you peace. Understand that any momentary feeling that you are experiencing today is a teeny tiny bit of information that has been added to the steady state you. It is likely going to make no change to the overall steady state you.

Second: If you understand this truth, by logic, you have found a friend. The steady state you. Keeping the steady state you in mind makes you realize that the transient you is not alone.

Let me give you a small proof that the steady state you is indeed your friend. When you said “No one cares about me,” you have actually exhibited care for yourself. You cared enough to articulate this idea, right? So, care has already happened. You have nurtured yourself. The only issue is that you failed to recognize this fact. You did not notice that you had already exhibited self care and self love. Recognize this. One way to organize your thought would be to think that the steady state you exhibited care to the current, agitated, transient you.

Recognizing yourself as your friend is an all powerful thought. If you start drawing strength from yourself, you stand tall. You are able to calmly shut down criticism to your self. Allow the steady state you come to the defense of the transient you. Do not allow the transient you to defend yourself. This is because the transient you is agitated and can’t think straight.

When you have practiced the skill of defending yourself through thoughtless criticisms, you will find people getting attracted toward you. Take their new found admiration with a pinch of salt, just as you take their criticism. Do not let it affect you or get complacent. This will disturb the steady state you, and make you less able to take care of the transient you in times of trouble.

One last thing: The way that the transient you deals with life’s challenges will determine how powerful the steady state you will be. A steady state you that has been built out of falsehoods cannot support you adequately. If you want a strong friend in the steady state you, you must work through each challenge that the transient you faces with truth, courage and a fight. If you do this, you will have a powerful ally that will guide you through life.

Spring fever

The chicken excitedly flaps her wing
We hear happy songbirds sing
Their voices have a joyous ring
As they welcome the onset of spring.

We chickens breathe a sigh of relief
Hoping this warm spell won’t be brief
We ask Lazy Laurie, our chicken commander in chief
Whether she can smell spring in the leaf.

“Yes!” says Lazy Laurie, the wise
As she sniffs hard, and sighs
Triumphantly she declares, “Come on, you guys!
Winter is gone. Oh my! How time flies.”

We dream of dust baths, flies and worms
No more of the cold, snowy snowstorms
As we groom our feathers to top forms
It is time for us to break the norms.

The grass beckons. Alas! We are stuck in the coop
How do we escape our fenced run and its goop
Crazy Cookie, the chicken’s mind goes in a loop
As she lets out a loud whoop.

Oreo, the chicken stops and stares
“Crazy Cookie’s gone crazy”, she declares
“Quiet Junior!” Lazy Laurie glares
As Crazy Cookies’ temper flares.

Paisley, the smallest of us all
Pets Crazy Cookie, “Calm now, there’s a doll.”
A mellowed Crazy Cookie lets out a call
For a meeting in the egg laying hall.

Together we form a plan to escape
Emerging from the hall, our plans take shape
One chicken atop another until we make
A vertical chicken totem pole, a piece of cake.

Paisley, the lightest one, reaches high
Reaching a little gap, she yells "Aye"
She squeezes out, and exclaims “Oh my!”
As lush grass meets her eye.

But the first order of the day
Is to free her sisters, come what may
Lowering a rope to where her sisters lay
She pulls out Crazy Cookie, all the way.

Soon all we chickens wrestle free
Widening the gap, that’s how it must be
As we escape, we feel carefree
And devour on the grass, full of glee.

“What’s this!” the humans cry
Finding their chickens awry
Back to the pen! The chickens sigh
Waving the lush green grass goodbye.

"Don’t you worry, my dear friends
A new plan starts where the old one ends
Tomorrow we will try new offends."
Says Crazy Cookie, as to her feathers she tends.

Mixed feelings about 2024

The year 2024 is ending. This was a rollercoaster year for us. There were many pluses, but also many minuses. Let’s unpack the year 2024 in Elfland.

The positives: The kids and I started the year with a bang. We travelled home from India, refreshed and raring to go. Rosie the dog turned 15 in May, which was a milestone that we were not expecting. We spent a few nights at the camp and did our usual things at Elf land. On a personal front, the most significant progress was that I got my stories “The flying boy” and “Animal diaries” edited. “The flying boy” is the only one that is nearing completion and will be self published this year. But that was not all. Tanya and I attempted NaNoWriMo with some good results. I am hoping to have more writings published from the work that came out of NaNoWriMo.

In terms of travel, the girls and I took a trip to Philadelphia. That was short. We couldn’t do more because of Rosie being too old. But the trip was very fun. I went back to India for two weeks in September which was nice too.

A huge change in our lives occurred when Tanya finished school. It was a whirlwind feeling. I didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad about it. After going through a range of emotions, I can say that this is a positive. Tanya took a gap year and will join Penn State to study biology next June. In the meantime, she has taken a seven month course at a local tech school named CPI to study solar tech. Oh ya, and the biggest thing. She got her driver’s license. That was quite an adventure. She is all grown up now, driving to CPI and back.

Leena has many friends at school and is very mature for her age. She is moving along, growing like a weed as usual. Next year I will write about this interesting girl of ours.

Summer was not my favorite. We stayed busy with the graduation and our houses. The street painting was the summer highlight. We also got two new chickens, Oreo and Paisley. Oreo is sweet. Paisley is a runner and won’t warm up to us. But ok, she has good survival instincts!

The negatives: Ok, I promise to keep the negative section smaller than the positive, although that will be tough. We lost three animals. Baby the chicken passed at the age of 8. It was kind of expected, but still sad. Then, finally in October, the dreaded moment came when Rosie got very sick and had to be put down. Though expected, it was painful. We were very used to seeing her pleasant grandma expression. She would no longer play, but she was still there. Her absence is felt by us. Kylo Ren, our other dog, feels it the most. He seems to be bummed out since she has been gone.

Finally, the nasty shock came in terms of Daisy the chicken’s death. Daisy was only 5 and we were not expecting her to die. But a hungry hawk had other plans and got her a couple of weeks ago. It was painful. She was already dead and apart when we found her. Hopefully she didn’t suffer.

The grand finale of negatives was over the last week when Kylo had bad diarrhea and we got scared that we would lose him. We took him to vet emergency. He responded to all the medicines and is back to normal now.

Yesterday Johan fell of a ladder while working on the camper and ended up with two broken ribs. We are super thankful that he is ok otherwise, but it was a very scary situation. He had to go to the emergency room.

Oopsie, looks like the negatives are as much as the positives. I am happy to say goodbye to 2024, and looking forward to our upcoming year 2025. We have big plans for the year, and hopefully will leave the negative energy behind.

All of us are happy and healthy, although Johan has some mending to do. Our family and friends are also doing well. So we have plenty to be thankful for.

Happy new year 2025!

Our Gingerbread houses were messy as ever

Thankful for kickboxing

It’s that time of the year again. You count your blessings, you are thankful for the wonderful people in your life, so you thank them before you start a new year of mistreating them. Just joking! But, I want to write a blog on the one thing in my life that I have been the most thankful for. That is kickboxing.

I started kickboxing when I was about 31. Joining a class was the best decision I ever took. Through the years, kickboxing has helped me become mentally and physically stronger. And then there was the one time that it saved me from being crippled.

I always loved martial arts. We did some karate at school. It was very basic and largely unmotivating. Most kids hated the class, but I remembered liking it. Fast forward.. to 31! I was a new mom of Tanya. As a new mom, I would have some strange notions and panic attacks every now and then. During one such moments, I remember getting stressed out about the fact that I was incapable of physically defending Tanya in case anyone attacked us. So, marshalling up my courage, I walked into an extremely mean looking gym called Titan fitness. They offered a free trial class in women’s kickboxing. After attending that, I never looked back. I was a proud member of Titan fitness.

I didn’t exactly fit in there. There were two reasons for that. Most of the other women were young, ranging from 13-25. The instructors made me feel a bit old (at 31!). Other than that, I was the only brown person there. Ok, no worries. I took to kickboxing like a fish takes to water. It was a blissful time. I soon felt in the peak of my health. And that was a very good thing, because dark times were around the corner.

A couple years later, I woke up one fine morning, paralyzed. My legs shook as I tried to walk to the bathroom. I was getting ready to go to work. Work was 2 hrs away and I usually left very early to make it there on time. I tried to climb into the bathtub. To my shock, I couldn’t lift my leg to get into the tub. That’s when I called in sick at work. By mid day, my condition worsened. At some moment, I got up to go to the next room, and fell down on the floor. That’s when we went to the hospital. I was wheeled in with a wheelchair.

The doctors had no clue what was wrong with me. But one doctor guessed it was Guillaine Barre syndrome. Say what?!! I just stared at her. Guillane Barre Syndrome (GBS) is an auto immune disorder where your immune system attacks your own nerves and leaves you paralyzed. One in 400,000 people get it. So I guess, I am one in 400,000! It’s not one in a million, but I’ll take it!

There is no way to diagnose GBS. But the doctor was convinced that this was what was ailing me. They airlifted me to Geisinger at Danville to continue treatment. Tanya was only three then! I remember the doctor came to see me when I was getting in to helicopter. She was gleeful about her diagnosis. I guess it was a high for her. I was also grateful to her for the diagnosis. I lay thinking, ok great! But now what?!

At Danville, they did some further tests to rule out MS. When they had ruled everything else out, they decided that they could treat me for GBS. They had a treatment called IVIG that they started. I responded to it! So they were on the right track. All I remember was laying on the bed and having hallucinations where I was floating around. Obama had just won the elections and I watched the news, trying to ignore the constant dread that I would never get up again. It would take me three or four tries to press a button on the remote, or the call button for the nurses. I do remember a kindly nurse. I was crying. He came and told me to be strong, and that I would get out of this! It’s amazing how I remember his kind words after all these years.

After nine days in the hospital, I was ready to be transported into a rehab facility. GBS had reversed, but my muscle strength was gone. However, I was definitely stronger than the time that couldn’t press remote buttons. I rolled over to the stretcher bed. The nurses were amused.

Once in rehab, the fight that I had learnt in kickboxing came back to me. The rehab was a very unmotivating place. Majority of the patients there were senior and unmotivated. The food was gross. I had to bury my head in a magazine to divert my attention from what I was eating so that I wouldn’t throw up. But I was determined to get better and ate every bite. I knew that once I got home, Tanya would come running and fling her body on my legs. I wanted to be able to stand when she did that.

The rehab was memorable. I pestered all the physical therapists to give me exercises to do in my off time spent in the room. They had rarely met a motivated patient before. But they supported me. I specifically remember one young African American physical therapist. She was new there. She and I had a bond. She understood my drive and pushed me hard. In nine days, I was able to be strong enough to leave.

A recovery from zero requires one to be tough mentally. But I knew I was in the best frame of mind to do that. After all, I had been kickboxing. Whenever I was disheartened, I would cling to my kickboxing. I vowed that I would get back to kickboxing. That became my goal. Two quotes inspired me. One was written on my gym wall at kickboxing. “Absorb what is useful — Bruce Lee”. This is my life mantra. The second was at the rehab place. “You are like a teabag. You never know how strong you are until you are in hot water.” So true.

Once home, my recovery was a lot faster. In a few months, I was back to kickboxing. Weakness persisted, but I fought it, and finally, bit by bit, overcame it. But I still feel under confident when walking on a steep hill. The weakness from that time flashes across my mind. But these are very rare. My recovery is full.

I continued kickboxing for many years. I can’t remember exactly when I stopped it. But I had Leena and had to pause it. Later in life I had an ACL tear from a fall. That was a miserable and extremely painful experience. The recovery was painful, and the doctors warned me to take it easy. I didn’t want to risk a re-tear and so I hung my gloves. I was sad to lose my best friend, kickboxing.

Fast forward to now. I am even older. At the ripe old age of 47, something interesting happened. My girls are now 18 and 12, and I wanted them to be involved in sports. I always wanted them to learn kickboxing and told them over the years to sign up. They never did. Finally I put my foot down and signed them up for a free lesson at a gym named CPAMMA. We arrived at the designated time and the girls signed in for a free lesson. I said, “what the heck. Sign me up too!”. So we took our free lesson. That was in July. This is December. We have been going to kickboxing regularly.

I love watching my girls kickboxing. They swing their legs with the grace of youth. I don’t think I have that anymore. But I have good posture and technique and can still do very well. My previous concerns of an ACL re-tear are no longer there. I realized that as long as I stick to the correct stance, it’s pretty safe. That means, not stress my knee. It works just fine. I find that I can’t raise my leg as high as my girls, but my current goal is to kick higher.

I also noticed one thing. Your instructor matters. While at my old gym, I was made to feel old at the age of 31, at the current gym, there is no such feeling. There are a couple of older women than me. But most importantly, the women instructors create a more positive space as opposed to the previous male instructors who created a more macho environment. I first thought, oh, this must not be as good as the other one, since they are not pushing harder. But I was proven wrong very elegantly by the ladies. We have been taught a range of techniques that I never learnt in all my years at the previous gym. This proves what I always knew. Women create a better environment, and gently push to get to levels that will exceed what men do with their macho techniques. It’s lovely to be a part of it.

As for my personal journey, I am thankful that kickboxing is back in my life. Older women develop osteoporosis, and I believe that staying on top of rigorous exercising combined with good diet can help avoid it. This hypothesis will be proven right or wrong with time. But, as of now, I am back to living my best life mentally and physically. Thank you kickboxing!

Kylo Ren the dog: Now, hold on mom! No signing off yet. I rarely get to blog nowadays. I will have to insist that I add to each blog from now onwards. So yes, I am aware that the ladies have been kickboxing. How? You may ask. Because, they tried some of their moves with me. ME! I guess they forgot that I am supreme leader Kylo Ren, grandson of Darth Vader, son of Leia (and Hans Solo too, though I killed him, ulp!). Anyway. So they made me sit and did their punches in the air. That was fine. But then they kicked in my direction. I wasn’t having it. I playbit them and jumped on them to air bite around their jaws. That took care of it! They haven’t been doing any of that anymore.

The other day, Tanya and Leena started grappling. My eyes popped out! Now, I don’t care who starts the fight. I intend to finish it. Since Tanya is my age and Leena is a baby, I naturally assumed that Tanya was the guilty party. So I went after her, jumping, play biting and pushing her off. Their grappling didn’t last long!

The only thing that I don’t like is that they refuse to recognize my supreme leadership, and instead dissolve into bunches of “Awww, he is so cute!”, and hugs that I then have to wrestle myself out of. Guess I am also getting good at grappling!

Crazy Cookie the chicken: Yee haw. (Comes flying from across the room, one leg pointed out, and the other curved, wings tight, kungfu style). Heh heh. I landed a paw on Kylo Ren’s cheek. He tried to go after me, but then got scolded by the girls and they have taken him away!

To begin my story for the day, brr, it’s cold out. We poor ladies have had to negotiate the snow. Luckily Leena has been supplying us with hot water ever so often. That keeps us going. But it’s definitely a cold winter.

Today there was a cat in our backyard. We were a bit worried about our safety but Kylo Ren took care of it. He chased the cat hard. The cat ran, and the bunny ran, and we ran. Kylo was a bit confused at all the sudden action, but the end result was that the cat is gone, hopefully for good!

In other yard news, Leena filled the bird feeders with bird feed. As usual, the squirrels started eating everything. But these days the humans have come up with a new technique. They open the window and squirt water on the squirrels with a water gun. The squirrels would jump off and drop bunches of bird feed on the ground as they did so. Wow, a dinner and a show! The girls and I have been getting some fun out of that.

Have a merry Christmas my dear friends.

The NaNoWriMo Indulgence

November was an interesting month at Elf land. Fifty percent of our family members were participating in the National November Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge. Tanya and I took it up and had a great time with it.

I only came to know about NaNoWriMo mid October when I was trying to educate myself about book sales and other stuff. Someone mentioned NaNoWriMo in their youtube video. It looked exciting, but wasn’t mid October too late to jump into something like that without any planning?

The NaNoWriMo challenge involves writing 50,000 words in the month on November. That amounts to about 1667 words a day. Writers take part in this self regulated challenge with the hope that they will have their novels completed at the end of the month.

I told Tanya about NaNoWriMo. On October 31, we were driving to Tanya’s friend’s place for Halloween, when she suddenly asked what I thought of NaNoWriMo. I told her that I was tempted to give it a try, and she felt the same. So the NaNoWriMo challenge was on.

Tanya surprised me. She said that she had a novel in mind since a long time, with characters and everything. I had no idea! She was also methodical in her approach. She downloaded a format for her novel. For the entire month of Nov, she kept up with it and managed to get through her 50,000 words on Nov 30. This was a major challenge for her since on Mondays and Wednesdays she is busy from 8 am to 7 pm with her trade school and kickboxing. I know she wrote 3000 words in a day more than once! That is no mean task for anyone.

As for me, I had no ideas to begin with. So my plan was to write a bunch of short stories, blogs, research on trash and anything else that I wanted and see where I would get. The challenge proved to be a most rewarding and an amazing learning experience for me. I am still in awe with how much one can achieve with such a simple activity.

To begin, I had nothing to go on. My picture book, “A flying boy” is already written. So I spent the first couple of write ups on making sequels for the book. The sequels were different characters’ points of view of the same story. Finally, I rewrote the entire book in a poetry format! This was the most fun. But after redoing the same story four times, I was absolutely done with it.

I then moved on to my second book, Animal Diaries. This book is proving to be a challenge. To move further, I had to get an opinion. Unfortunately while the editor worked, my book couldn’t move.

I then moved onto trash research. My plan is to ultimately research trash generation and alternatives to plastic generation and hopefully come up with solutions to our trash problems. However, I realized that trying to research as well as write was very time consuming. On a couple of days I worked for four hours. That wasn’t sustainable. So I had to put a lid on the trash!

Now I finally had to pause and think about what to write. When one actually pauses and thinks is when the ideas finally come! To my delight and surprise, stories came as I spent time staring into space.

My second picture book, named “Mili finds her voice”, was the next story that I wrote. My hope is to create a picture book with this story. Of course, picture books are very expensive to produce, so this can become a chapter book if “The flying boy” does not end up generating revenue.

After this I drew a blank. And then a most surprising thing happened. I sat to write a story with no thought in my head. It’s called “Emily’s day”, where Emily doesn’t have any thoughts on how to spend her day. As my story went on, so did Emily’s day. At the end of my story, and Emily’s day, a sweet story came to life. This was an intensely satisfying experience.

Finally, after fifteen days of wandering, jumping from story to story and generating smaller ideas, I had an inspiration that resulted in a 30,000 word book. So far unnamed, this is probably my favorite story that I wrote so far. It’s about things that happen to a ship in a bottle and to various creatures that are linked to the ship. The story that I worked on so far is haphazard, since there was no initial plan and the book came to existence as it moved. In fact, this book is so far like a dream, where things happen and then other things happen, and nothing is planned. So, for instance, the kids started off as 8 year old, and then mid way I had to make them 12 and 13 year old!

Both Tanya and I are very happy to have met the challenge of writing 50K words each. We are, however, leery of what we have written. I can safely say that my 50 K is a lot of garbage (so essentially I did deal with trash!). However, the trash holds great treasures and I am quite optimistic that It’s not going to end up in landfill!

Tanya and I agree that we need to redo a lot of our work. So we are going to be doing a 420JanWriMo, which will be a second writing month in Jan where we redo our work, and hopefully get it to a more reasonable place.

There’s a lot of criticism of NaNoWriMo online. It allows the use of AI for the challenge. People found this very upsetting. However, it doesn’t bother me. AI is here to stay, and we may as well accept the role of AI in writing. I loved NaNoWriMo, because it was a path of self discovery for me. What an amazing challenge. In fact, I looked at it as more of an indulgence to my creative energy than a challenge. Looking forward to repeating such a creative indulgence next year!

How to digest grains better

As I mentioned in my last blog, the human digestion system does not digest grains very efficiently. Ways to improve digestion are soaking, fermentation and sprouting of grains.

If we look at our past, our ancestors only consumed soaked or fermented whole grains. All grains contain phytic acid (on organic acid in which phosphorus is bound) in the outer layer or the bran. Untreated phytic acid combines with calcium, magnesium, copper, iron, and especially zinc in the intestinal tract and block their absorption. Due to this, a diet high in unfermented whole grains may result in serious mineral deficiencies and bone loss.

Every seed has phytic acid, or phytate, and enzyme inhibitors. Phytic acid serves as the main form of storage of phosphorus in seeds. When the seed sprouts, the phytate breaks down and the phosphorus is released to be used by the young plant. Enzyme inhibitors prevent the seeds from sprouting prematurely.

Soaking grains allow enzymes, lactobacilli and other organisms to break down and neutralize phytic acid. Seven hours of soaking will neutralize most of the phytic acid. Soaking in warm water also neutralizes the enzyme inhibitors. Additionally, soaking encourages production of beneficial enzymes.

Coming to protein, protein in whole grains, especially gluten, are very difficult to digest. A high gluten grain like wheat puts an enormous strain on the digestive system. This is because gluten is not completely broken down by our digestive enzymes. While we are young, the undigested gluten may not be an issue. Over time, it can cause inflammation and damage to our gut lining.

A damage to our gut lining leads to what is called the leaky gut syndrome. To explain, gut is semi permeable. The mucous lining of our intestines is designed to absorb water and nutrients from our food into our bloodstream. An increase in gut permeability can let larger molecules through and allow toxic molecules to enter your bloodstream.

While leaky gut is real, but the associated diseases are unknown. Two recognized diseases from leaky gut are celiac disease and inflammatory bowel syndrome.

Possible disease associated with leaky gut are obesity, diabetes, arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, asthma and fibromyalgia.

Leaky gut is not a recognized disease. However, it stands to reason that since the intestines transfer nutrients into the bloodstream through their semi permeability, an increase in the permeability will cause unwanted substances to enter into your bloodstream.

Fermentation breaks down gluten, thereby making grains much easier to digest.

Sprouts are the next level in terms of superior grain processing. All the nutrients such as protein, starch, fat and enzymes required by a plant to begin it’s life are contained in a sprout.

When the grain sprouts, the enzymes activate and begin to turn the grain’s stored nutrients into usable forms.

The same process that makes the stored nutrients easier for the seed to use also makes it easier for people to use. Sprouted grains are thus very nutritious and easy to digest.

Sprouting also increases the amount of vitamins and minerals such as zinc, iron, magnesium, phosphorous, and B vitamins so that your body can absorb them.

Soaking, sprouting and fermenting are ways to improve digestibility of grains.

The inefficient omnivore

Is human originally meant to be an herbivore or an omnivore? Here’s a summary from my readings.

Looking at the anatomy of carnivores, they have wider mouth openings relative to head size and jaw joints on the same plane as their teeth. Lower jaw cannot move backwards and forwards, and has very limited side to side motion. The stable jaw helps in capturing, killing and dismembering prey. The greater side to side and front to back motion of an herbivore’s jaw gives the mobility to crush and grind fibrous plants.

Carnivores have sharp, pointy front teeth for tearing flesh while herbivores have shovel like long and flat front teeth for cutting plants. Carnivores have long, curved canines sharp enough to capture and tear prey, while herbivores have varying canines, with some having none at all. Carnivores have triangular molars for cutting flesh, while herbivores have flat molars for crushing plants.

Carnivores produce no salivary amylase, which is needed to digest starch. The have wide esophagi that allows them to swallow large chunks of meat without choking. Herbivores require extensive chewing and have digestive enzymes in their saliva better suited for breaking down plant matter.

Carnivores have large stomach capacities. Herbivores have smaller stomach capacities but larger intestines. In order to kill the pathogens in meat, carnivores have a more acidic stomach.

Looking at these definitions, humans have a lot more in common with herbivores than carnivores. From jaw, to teeth structure, to high salivary amylase, smaller stomachs and longer intestines when compared to carnivores make us more herbivorous. We do have very acidic stomach, especially when empty.

Here’s the problem. We have certain deficiencies that does not make us perfect herbivores. Most herbivores have multiple stomachs and a long length of intestines. Humans have only one stomach and a relatively short intestines. Due to this, humans are inefficient as herbivores. They also barely fit into the carnivore definition, except for the acid stomach.

Our inefficient digestion for plant based diets, as well as our deficiencies as meat eaters sound like a gloom and doom scenario. But, take heart, humans. We do have one thing in our favor. And that is, our brains (during the few times that we actually decide to use them). Thanks to our brains, and our collective knowledge, well documented through time, we can be very efficient as omnivores.

I will let you digest this info before sharing how to be an efficient omnivore in my next blog.

Reference:

https://nutritionstudies.org/are-humans-herbivores-or-omnivores

Autobiography of a soda bottle

Hello! So glad you stopped by. I have been a bit bored these days. Not much happens in my current home. I live among smelly, decomposing odds and bits in a hole below the Earth’s surface. My home’s name is landfill. Today is a good day. Not much has happened. My neighbors have left me alone. Rainy days are a whole different story. My home becomes a pool of slurry, water mixed with various decomposing neighbors. This toxic slurry starts taking bits of my body away. Ouch. It’s painful. It wasn’t always like this. You may not believe it if you looked at me today, but I had a glamorous past life. Let me share my story.

My mom’s name was oil, and my dad was gas. They met, and bonded. I am hoping there was a love story, but I am not sure. Their bond was chemical. I guess they had chemistry!! They formed monomers, which bonded further to make large chains of plastic. They were made into a million pellets.

My brother and sister pellets and I were melted together and put into a mold to make my beautiful, shiny and clear bottle shape.

We then went on a roller coaster ride. It was in a manufacturing plant. We travelled on a conveyor belt, and were filled with some sweet, bubbly liquid. I loved playing with those bubbles, popping them and watching them with wonder. I was just a kid, you see. The roller coaster ride was a bubbly fun. We first got shiny labels. I stood very still to make sure that my label was looking nice and straight. That was a good thing, since they were discarding the bottles with crooked labels.

They then put us in new boxes. We were put at the back of a truck. We went for a long road trip. This was very fun. I wanted to look outside, but there were no windows. Nevertheless, the excitement in my box was palpable. Once in a while, I would also get to pop a bubble from the juice inside of me.

Once I reached my destination, I was removed from the box, and stored in a beautiful freezer. It was clean, shiny and clear. Everyone could see me as I stood proud and straight in my spot. I didn’t know what to expect. A human came by and opened the fridge. I was very nervous. He picked my neighbor up and left. As I watched my shop, I saw humans coming and going, and picking a bottle or a bag of their choice. “Oh!”, thought I. How interesting would it be to be selected from hundreds of other bottles. I was trying to look my best as I stood in my spot! My neighbor laughed at me. He said that he was way more popular than me and he would be picked before me. I was annoyed. I hoped against hope that I would be picked first.

A human opened our fridge door. He was looking at an aisle above ours. My neighbor and I vied for his attention. As we stood tall, my neighbor pushed me. Uh oh! I fell sideways, although I couldn’t fall far due to my tight surroundings. My fall caught the human’s attention. He bent to steady me, and then, after a moment’s decision making, he picked me out of the freezer and shut the door!

Wow! I was finally selected. As I stuck my tongue out at my neighbor, the human walked over to the counter and paid for me. I was so proud that he spent all that money for me.

My human took me home. He kept me in his fridge. Now, this wasn’t as clean as my previous home, but I wasn’t about to complain. My human would pull me out of the fridge ever so often to drink from me. I felt a bond.

One day, he took a swig from me and then stared. I was empty. He looked disappointed. I felt sorry for him. After all, we have become friends. Now what would he do?

My human walked across the room, and opened a trash can. He dropped me in there and shut the lid. I was flabbergasted. No, no no! This couldn’t be happening. I was shiny and beautiful. And here I was among junk. Rotting food and smelly alcohol wipes started making my beautiful label wet. I tried to squeeze to a side to avoid the dirt. But it was no use. Soon my human “friend” opened the trash can and dropped more junk on me. Cleaning supplies stung my skin. I was in trouble.

The next day, the trash can opened. My human took the trash bag out of the can and took it outside. It was a windy day. I thought, “this was my chance”. I decided to make a run for it. As he tried to put me in the outside trash bin, I flew out of the trash bag and rolled across the street. “Hey!”, he yelled. I momentarily felt sad about ditching my friend. But when I turned around, I saw that he had every intention of putting me back in that bag. I made a dash for it.

My human was persistent. He ran across to get me. I tried to get away but he was too fast for me. As I gave him one last look, he put me back in that dreaded bag and shut the lid of the trash can. I sat in darkness, wondering what life had in store for me now.

While I mused, a truck came by and swallowed the contents of the trash can, including me. My trash bag ripped and I fell into the dirty, soiled bottom of the truck. Eww! As I moved to keep myself from getting filthy, I bumped into a rotten egg. “Move, trash!”, said the egg. Then it hit me. I was no longer a shiny, prized bottle. In 3-4 days, I had gone from occupying a prime spot in the store to becoming trash. ‘How can that be?!,” I said out loud. A half-filled water bottle scoffed! “3-4 days?! Consider yourself lucky. I was put in store this morning, and 3 hours later I am already trash. And get this! My human did not even finish the water that was packaged in me.” It was a sobering realization.

The garbage truck dropped me at a large facility. As I awaited my fate, I saw that I was laying next to the half-filled water bottle. The bottle said, “I am scared too. Why don’t we stick together?”. I said, “Sure. You have a name?”. The bottle said “Aqua. And you?”. “Fizzy,” I replied. We cap bumped. I had made a friend.

After a few days, a truck came by and we were placed in it’s rear bed. Aqua and I had stuck our labels together. We stayed close, even though we were bumped and jostled about.

The truck drove us far out of the city. After hours, we came to a stop. A couple more hours later, the truck tilted it’s bed and dumped us in a huge hole in the ground. Aqua and I were thankful that the glue on our labels were still good. We stayed stuck together. We finally landed into what seems like my forever home. And when I say forever, I am talking about 1000 years.

As I mentioned before, whenever our landfill fills up with water, the water-soluble parts of our bodies break out from us. Some of these compounds are very toxic. These toxic compounds mix up and form a mixture called Leachate. The leachate moves through groundwater, soil or streams and makes things toxic. My neighbor, TV, told us that she had heard that humans hate us plastics for all the toxic pollution that we create. But, hey, I didn’t ask for this. My human could have used me for a long time if he wanted. I was still shiny and new when he threw me out!

Aqua and I have become good friends. We have some other friends too. TV is the most informed in our group. We also have laptop, but laptop’s brains were pulled out of her before she was thrown out. She smiles at us, but is otherwise clueless.

TV told us that unlike more organic trash which can be broken down or decomposed from wind, erosion or with microorganisms, we plastics do not decompose. We simply break down into smaller and smaller pieces.

Sometimes we discuss how our fates could have been avoided. Why would humans not reuse our smaller pieces to form new bottles? Well, TV tells us that this does happen. Some bottles are lucky enough to be shredded, melted and reused to form new bottles. This sounds so much better. Although it still seems nonsensical to me. Why all this work just so that a human being can use us for 3 hours or so?

This morning, I had a new thought. I asked Aqua. How can a human afford to spend that much money on buying a bottle just to throw it away three hours later? Aqua and I pondered over it, but we didn’t have an answer. We decided to present our question to TV.

TV only wakes up in the afternoon. She then stays up very late into the night. She said, that’s how she always functioned even during her time with the humans. We posed our burning question to TV. She laughed at our innocence. She had this mindboggling answer for us, that I am still trying to process. She said, “humans do not pay for you. You are free. You come with the drink” The bubbly sweet one in my case and the water in Aqua’s case”. I couldn’t believe it. I was free, and my sole purpose was to carry the drink? But, who paid for my manufacturing, and who will pay for my clean up? Who would pay for all the fuel? TV laughed. “It’s not the consumer that will pay. The company that sells the liquid will pay peanuts for you. What they pay does not represent the actual cost. The environment pays. The animals pay. The poor people who lose their valuable land pay.”

Aqua and I laid our discussions to rest.

References:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1182406945105843

https://futurism.com/plastic-decomposition

Elf land heads to winter

Life has been slowly moving on here. We feel the void Rosie left. Lots of little things remind us of her. Simplest things such as shopping for lesser food, not having her sleeping in the most unhandy locations, not taking care of her little needs, come back and haunt us.

On to more positive happenings. Halloween came. We did some seriously good pumpkin carvings. Halloween was quiet because both the kids went out with their friends. I must say I was glad. I am not big on trick or treating. We plan to pick up on art and things now that winter is fast approaching.

One big happening is that both Tanya and I are participating in the National November Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). So plenty of writing and research going on at our end.

Johan has been working on the camp. He and Tanya are putting roof panels. Other than that, he has worked on cars and houses.

Tanya is busy with her solar tech classes, her barista job and music.

Leena is busy with school and her many projects. She is majorly into face creams, oils etc and keeps coming up with recipes. I am trying to keep up with the supplies!

Kylo Ren the dog: Hello, one and all. Thanks so much for stopping by. I have been lonesome without my lovely wife. Sometimes I visit her grave, but I never know what to say.

Life has been moving along. Rosie rarely moved at all, but her absence is very much felt. The humans mope about. I try to keep them going. It’s working well. We have gone for nice fall walks. The other day mom, Tanya and Leena took me to the park. They started playing basketball. Man, that’s some huge ball. I tried to catch the ball by jumping atop it with my fore paws. It’s not easy, let me tell you.

As far as shooting the hoops is concerned, best leave it to the humans. I don’t get it. Why would you try to throw the ball through some basket far above in the sky? It makes zero sense. Since you humans seem clueless about how a ball works, allow me to clarify. I will describe the structure and purpose of a ball. Any dog will tell you, a ball should be small, ideally the size of a tennis ball. It can be a bit smaller or bigger, but no bigger than what a standard dog snout can hold. Now, some balls are pointy at the edges, almost like a pillow. They call it a foot ball in these parts, even though that ball never touches a foot. If you have been following my posts, you know what I have to say to that. Humans are strange. Why would a hand ball be called a foot ball? That football is not entirely undesirable. Dogs like to bite it in the middle and run around with it. When we get tired, we drop it and sleep on it like it’s our pillow. So the foot ball, or the pillow ball, is a versatile toy loved by dogs.

But to continue, a standard ball is round and should be sized to be held in a dog snout. Why, you ask, must the size be appropriate for a dog snout? This brings me to the purpose of a ball. No! It’s not to throw into a basket. It is also not to fall over like dominoes having a bad day. The sole purpose of a ball is to be thrown as far as possible so that a dog such as me can run fast and catch it.

Today mom got a tennis ball and threw it at me. It was early morning. I was still groggy. I wasn’t upto running behind the ball. Guess what she did next?! She dipped the ball into my water and then threw it. Wow! Juicy ball! I caught it with glee and played with it for a bit.

The one thing that I notice is that now that Rosie is gone, I feel outnumbered. The human energy is overwhelming the house. I am missing the dog energy. Also, my job of protecting Rosie is gone, which makes me feel lazy and bored. What I miss the most is troubling and playing with Rosie. She never actually played but would bark loud complaints. I used to enjoy our back and forth. Oh, heaven help me.

Daisy the chicken: We saw the day Rosie was sick. We were pasted to the fence, staring at her. The humans were trying to revive her. But the animals always know. This was not looking good. Rosie was taken away. I am a bit upset about this. No one asked for my opinion. At the very least, I should have been allowed to say good bye. I think in their worried state, the humans forgot. Rosie was my girl. She and I had that special bond going. But I could only wish her from afar. Once she got back and was buried, I spent time hanging by her grave.

Lazy Laurie the chicken: Ok Daisy, that’s enough. You have been dustbathing by her grave! Oops sorry. Looks like I hurt Daisy’s feelings. Actually, it’s true. If you have read our previous blogs, you will know. Rosie and Daisy were very close. It was a special animal bond. Rosie loved having us around in her old age. But ultimately she just got too old. I can relate actually. At the ripe old age of 8, I can empathize with how Rosie felt. I am the last left from our original brood. I know my time will come soon and I will reunite with my sisters Baby, Dandelion and Chocolate Sprinkles.

Paisley the chicken: I barely knew Rosie, since we only came here in July. I never thought she was to be feared. In fact, my sisters are more ferocious and scary than Rosie ever was.

I wanted to tell y’all how miserable it is to be the lowest in the pecking order. I am constantly bullied. The humans have actually noticed my compromised status in this group. To help me out, they throw feed in various directions. Unfortunately the chickens chase me wherever I try to get in. The only thing that is in my favor is that I am super fast. I grab food and then I dart right off. Crazy Cookie mentioned the other day that I reminded her of Chocolate Sprinkles, who used to dart about in a similar fashion. All I can say is, Chocolate Sprinkles must have been smart, and the lowest in the pecking order! Oh, wait. The human is here. Run!!!

God’s eye view

Let’s do something fun, shall we? We are going to imagine that we are God. We got bored sitting in our heavenly abode. So we decided to have some fun. Let’s go to Earth and check out how it is doing. We are excited to see the fruits of our hard work.

We put on our sneakers and descend towards Earth. Oh! What’s all this noise? Wow, humans are noisier than ever. What could possibly be creating such a din? Let us go down and see.

As we go further down, our eyes sting. What’s happening? Our eyes are on fire! Oh! Wait. It is the plumes of pollution clouding our vision. We can’t see at all! Oh, but we are God. So let us turn on our special goggle vision. That’s much better. We can see now.

We see trucks, cars and lots of light. Wow, this makes our heavenly abode look dark in comparison! Can we grab some of those string lights on our way back? Hey, focus Gods. Let’s remember that we are beyond glamour and greed. Onwards.

Wow, it’s really dirty around here. There’s so much trash. The trash combined with the smoke makes the air unbreathable. Luckily, being Gods, we don’t really need to breathe. But, can we go somewhere else, maybe a little bit outside of all this mayhem?

We start moving out of the city. On the way, we hear chants and prayers. What’s this? Oh, the humans are calling us, bowing to us and generally trying to make us feel good. Well! That’s nice! Thanks humans. But really, if you want us to feel good, can you please turn off those lamps and quieten the deafening noise? Also, we see that you have some beautiful structures, or places of worship, erected for us. That’s very sweet. But we much rather live where there is clean air and silence. Can you be so nice as to allow the homeless and the dogs right outside to move in? Please also give them that food you are offering. It’s a kind offer, but one that we must refuse for obvious reasons. We like food from nature and not that thingamabob that you put together. Please, don’t feel bad. We just like to keep our systems clean. We are God, remember?!

We travel further outside the city. Ah, here is some peace and quiet. We enter the forests. Finally, somewhere that we can rest for a bit. We move further into the peace and the darkness. We see animals. Yay! Finally. Creatures that make sense. They don’t actually pray to us. They never had to. We still like them. Look how fluffy they are?! Aww. We feel momentarily proud of our creation, before remembering that we are God, and must not have pride.

It’s night time, so we don’t see the animals in action. They are sensibly resting, recuperating for their following day’s routine. Night creatures are out and about, hunting, moving around. They see us. They like us, but they don’t talk much to us. A polite nod, and they are gone. We get the feeling that they consider us their equal. It’s a happy feeling.

We move. Oh, what’s this? We are dismayed. Big machines have been tearing our creation apart. We see trees cut down, areas burnt clean of the woods. We see animals moving further away from population. Wow, these humans are a bit off. They want to please us by erecting buildings in our name and offering us strange concoctions, but they cut down our own creation to build these structures. One would think that it would be obvious to them that we won’t like them cutting and decimating our creation. Remind me, fellow Gods? Were these the smartest beings on the planet? Why do we get the feeling that we messed up?

Feeling a bit sad, but controlling our feelings to keep the even Godly temperament, we move further out. Wow, we have barely been in the forests and there we see lights again. But, what’s this?! It’s a hundred times worse than the initial city we had descended into!

Wow, look at all those missiles flying around! What’s happening? We ask a passing human what’s going on? He takes one look at us, shrieks and faints. Oh no! What have we done? As we try to revive him, a dog goes by. He informs us that the country is at war over religion. The dog is not afraid of us. He tells us that he will take care of the fallen human. He tells us that the human was drunk. He then wishes us good luck for our onward journey!

We are baffled. A million questions come to us. A war? Over religion? Over us?! But we are the ultimate believers of peace and kindness. Our whole mantra is love for each other. And these people are fighting? Over us? We seem to be experiencing some serious design failures here!

We also wonder about the dog. He seemed smart and practical. The humans who we designed as the most intelligent of them all seems to be falling apart. And what is this drink the dog spoke about? Wow, we have missed a lot. Or surveillance team needs to tighten up.

Making a mental note to talk to the surveillance team, we move on. We see people warring, killing other humans, even babies in our name. Now, we are Gods, and I know we are not supposed to have feelings, but we feel a bit ashamed. This won’t do. We need to steady our emotions.

We move, looking for a respite. We see a human drinking from a bottle. Oh, this must be the magic drink the dog was talking about. We take a sip. Yikes!!! We splutter, spitting the drink out in all directions. This is poison. What have these humans been concocting in our absence?! They seem to be using their brains for all the wrong reasons.

A bit dejected, we move on. Oh, heaven! We are flying over the ocean. It is dark and quiet here. Hopefully we can spend some time to regain our composure. We fly, watching fishes and other deep sea creatures with our special night, water visions. Things are looking good. We do think those reefs look a bit sparse.

We see something else. Wow, what is this new translucent creature. We don’t remember making them. Let’s take a dive and look. We inspect the creature. It looks unfriendly. It doesn’t respond to us at all. As we poke and prod, it starts floating away. We grab it. To our horror it bursts and is hollow!

A passing shark laughs in amusement at our bewilderment. It informs us that it is not a creature at all. It is human generated plastic trash. We are confused. We try to look Godly and knowing. But the shark can see that we don’t get it. It leads us to a place where there is a large floating island of similar trash.

As we watch in horror, a turtle eats one of them. It is instantly in pain. We rush to it’s aid and extract it with our powers. The shark is not impressed. It tells us that it will be impressed the day the oceans get clean and no other creature has to meet such fate. It gives us a long, piercing look. We are momentarily scared. After all, it is a shark. Shark knows we are God, so it simply swims off. We realize that we are not going to get any veneration from these creatures!

We get out of the water. We are sad. We go to the tallest mountains, and fly over the massive rivers. Some places look ok. But a majority of the places are in ruins.

We also find that humans are in general angrier than other creatures. The animals only look ferocious when they hunt and on a few rare occasions. We find the humans beating each other up at the slightest provocation. Even an accident angers them. We also see that the more powerful beats up the lesser powerful. We see children beaten. We see women being hit. Oh no. This is a fundamental flaw. We meant for the women to be stronger on the inside and a little less strong than the man on the outside. But it seems that the inner strength has been forgotten and the women are suffering. Ulp!

We are saddened. We retreat to a place of worship. Maybe someone will be patient and answer our questions there without getting scared. We hope the poison drink has not taken ahold of the place of worship. We find a man the others call a priest.

We tap the priest gently. He looks startled, but luckily stays on his feet. He politely asks what he can do for us. We put our concerns and disappointments of the evening in front of him as succinctly as possible.

He smiles and informs us that this is the world that we created. We being Gods should have anticipated it. Us being surprised only brings to question our wisdom as Gods. As we mull over this, he pats us on our backs and tells us, “why don’t you go back to your heavenly abode? All is good and beautiful there. Let us deal with the matters of the Earth”. He hands us edible concoctions, bows to us and walks off.

We ascend back in silence.

elfhut

The latest activities and experiments of our elf land