Ummm. Items of discourse

Okay, I don't even know how to organize all of these thoughts in my head. I want to write about them all, so perhaps I will just lump them all into this one post. Prepare yourselves!

Yesterday was like the cream of the crop- weather wise. Absolutely beautiful day. So beautiful, in fact, that I whipped out a pair of capris and flip flops. YES flip flops in MARCH. In the UP! That's like unheard of. My hubby, baby, and I took a looonnnnng walk to soak up as many of the suns rays as we could. During our walk, we talked a lot about summertime and what our expectations were going to be. Our chat quickly turned serious after I voiced some of my concerns about drinking during the summer. I tend to associate the two and I have a hard time staying sober because of it. I'd really, really, really like to stay sober this summer. I think it will be the first time in....too long that I have been. I have a child who needs me, relies on me to care for him. How can I do that when I'm shotgunning beers around a bonfire?

If it weren't for my hubby-man, I wouldn't be back in high spirits. He has a knack for solving all my problems and he did it again yesterday. He encouraged me to get in the correct mindframe for the summer and to plan on abstaining. My goal for helping to avoid temptations is to focus on my health. I've really been doing that a lot over the past two years or so, as we first transitioned to a vegetarian diet, then added in a lot more exercising, and now we've been eating a more vegan-based diet. I've even been learning a bit about a raw food diet. I tried it for a bit, but my stomach just was not handling it quite so well. Perhaps someday in the future I will attempt that again. But anyways, I hope to focus my attention on getting our bodies in tip-top shape. Be the healthiest we have ever been. If I focus a lot of health, how could I possibly want to drink to destroy any progress we've made?

The other week, Bean (my son...that's his nickname, not his real name) had a checkup and had to get some bloodwork done, which came back saying he had an abnormal level of smudge cells. So more testing had to get done and we spent a few more days worrying about it. I should find out more today, but the nurse was saying something about it possibly being anemia. This is incredibly disappointing to me. Anemia is something I have battled since high school. I couldn't stay awake during my fifth hour chemistry class- ever. But that was because I ate a very poor diet. I half starved myself sometimes as a small bag of Doritos chips for lunch is just not adequate for anybody. When I became vegetarian I knew that was something I was going to have to work on and I tried, but sometimes I wouldn't pay attention too much on what kind of meals I was making and after a few days of that, my iron stores were down again. Now that we're vegan, it's still hard. I know all the plant foods that are high in iron and I try to incorporate them as much as possible. I take a prenatal, which has a higher level of iron and other goodies, but it doesn't seem to do ANYTHING. I was browsing a fav. blog of mine- Walk Slowly, Live Wildly and she recommended a prenatal that absorbs well and is chock full of good stuff. Soooo I ordered it and hopefully it's as great as she said! She also suggested a test to do with your vitamin to see if it's readily absorbed by your body. Put your vitamin in apple cider vinegar for 45 and see if it dissolves. Mine had just gotten the nasty artificially colored coating off of it. Lame.
Anyways, I feel like I've been dragging butt again. About 1:00 on the dot, I have to lay down and take a nap. I can't get through my afternoons anymore and I'm suspicious of anemia again. If I have anemia, it's pretty likely that Beaners is getting it then too. How awful. I feel like a horrible mother.

According to some of my research, vegans/vegetarians are no less likely to get anemia than meat eaters. Which is surprising. As long as they follow a varied, healthy diet, they should have no problem. I think I have a few things against me in this regard though. For one, I am nursing, so a lot of my iron goes to Bean. Two, I haven't had high iron stores since goodness knows when. And when I gave birth and for the weeks afterwards, it was very low. So low that whenever I stood up, no matter how slowly, I would get dizzy. Also, we just took a completely random road trip to New Orleans that lasted about a week or so and during which we weren't the healthiest of eaters. So perhaps that screwed me over. Who knows! Regardless, I've gotta get it up! And for all you vegans, vegetarians, or meat eaters out there- make sure you keep your iron levels up. Otherwise you feel like poo. Very, very sleepy poo.

I forgot some of my other topics and I don't like cramming them all into one post anyways. Cheers for now!