Which is fine.

Except that trying to get valid information online is life sifting through a truckload of elephant manure to find the good stuff. Everyone’s got an opinion – often backed up by little knowledge that I can hang my scientifically-educated-and-trained hat on – and it’s a lot of fits and starts.

One thing that has always cracked me up, though, is the objections to the raw food diet. I just don’t get them – I really don’t.

For instance:

1. The Raw Food Diet Isolates You Socially. The same could be said if I tell you that I don’t go to bars and drink. I don’t go to bars much. Because middle aged women hanging out in bars tend to look a little creepy and because the conversation tends to get a ittle limited after about nine o’clock. That doesn’t mean I don’t hang out with bar-goers. Or that I don’t drink, or hang out with people who drink.

When I go out to eat with someone and I order the biggest salad they got (because you can get a big salad anywhere – even McDonald’s), someone might ask me “Is that all you’re having?” And I usually tell them yes, because to get all the stuff that a restaurant puts on a good salad takes a lot more time to make at home than I usually spend. And then it’s done. If I were dining with someone who berated or ridiculed me for my food choices – well – I probably wouldn’t be dining with them.

2. Raw Food Takes Too Much Time To Prepare. Nooooo. First of all, just grabbing some raw fruit (which I eat a lot of) takes NO time to prepare. And even when I make the stuff I usually eat – soups and pastas and stews and dips and stuff – almost every meal I ever make takes about ten minutes to whip up. Which is a lot less than it takes me to make whatever cooked thing I make for my husband.

Even with the dehydrating thing, which I’m learning more about – to me it’s no different than throwing a roast in the crockpot and planning to eat it eight hours later. I don’t expect to take the roast out of the fridge and cut into it immediately – I accept that it will be some hours before it’s done. That planning ahead doesn’t bother me with a crockpot – so why should it bother me with a dehydrator?

3. It’s Just Not Practical to Eat Raw All the Time. Listen. I did the whole low carb thing once, and believe me, that could get tough finding something low-carb in airports and malls and convenience stores. So can counting Weight Watcher’s Points at people’s homes and their home cooked meals.

Conclusion: It’s All About HABITS! Eating a raw food diet – or changing your diet at all in any way – is all about changing habits – and that can be tough.

When I was a eat-anything-that-didn’t-bite-me-first person, it was easy to just eat whatever was placed in front of me, or whatever was at eye level on the shelves at the store. Or whatever I was used to based on my upbringing.

Is that really how you want to make your choices about what you eat – or anything you do in your life?

As for me, it is fun for me to learn new food preparation skills – to learn what goes with what – what thickens things, what substitutes for what.

And as I learn, I develop new habits.

And I love what I eat – and I feel great!

The latest started, appropriately, on January 1 and I was all about starting with them.

Except, of course, that January 1 was a Friday and the start of my three day weekend at work.

Which would also have been no big deal, except that I didn’t go grocery shopping before then. Meaning, I had no real food in the house. To take to work. or otherwise.

So, this weekend, while I was starving and gnawing on anything that wasn’t nailed down, I thought about how dumb that was. No matter what you decide to do, if you decide to eat consciously, pretty much everyone knows you have to plan ahead a little bit.

So I gave myself a break, and set my sights on shopping and joining in on Tuesday (since I sleep much of Monday after my long shifts).

I also decided that I would learn to cook (because any change in eating habits necessitates a change in the cooking habits you’re used to) uh – things that I like to eat – and quit trying to make myself like things that some guru says I should like.

I personally love messing around in the kitchen. I love playing with my food! So I made a list of things I wanted to try this week – things like Spanish rice, corn chowder, and chili – done raw. I got up today and put a batch of raw corn chips in my brand new dehydrator, and I went off to the store.

I just now finished the flipping best bowl of thick, chunky chili I’ve ever eaten in my life which, although raw, warmed my little cockles on this below zero nasty day. And I had some left over for later. Because the real me is all about leftovers – yet another thing I’ve decided to accept about myself.

A lot of people are determined to make healthier eating choices in this, the New Year. I say, Don’t Set Yourself Up For Failure. Give yourself permission to learn some new skills – what goes with what – what substitutes for some of the less healthy things you’ve used by habit.

And plan ahead. Cuz there’s nothing worse than getting caught with your hunger on, and nothing but junk around you to eat.

Bon appetit!

I will tell you that, at the beginning of it all, I switched to a plant based diet as a “diet” – because I had those nagging pounds that I just could not lose.

And it worked. Everywhere I went, people commented on me losing weight. And it was effortless.

Then it became more about health reasons, as my husband had stent after stent placed in his coronary arteries. Unfortunately, he decided, after a trial, that the change in lifelong eating habits was just too uncomfortable for him. He remains a dedicated omnivore, and always will be one, and I respect his choice.

As I got further into my graduate nursing studies, I read citation after citation after citation about how meat eating – and dairy consumption – is recognized in the medical community as the number 1 cause of a host of ailments, most specifically autoimmune and inflammatory disorders.

And of course, Al Gore has explained pretty clearly how modern “factory farming” is wreaking havoc on the environment, guzzling resources and polluting the water and the air that we depend on to live.

Recently, a student at the nearby university took serious offense to an instructor showing a PETA-type video to her class showing cruelties inflicted on animals on the killing floors of the slaughterhouses, or in battery cages that chickens live on. Her family has farmed for generations and she wanted to make the point that the vast majority of farmers are good to the animals they raise. And I do not doubt her a bit.

But here’s the thing. There is a huge intellectual disconnect in that whole argument that I just can’t get past!

“We are good to the animals that we raise – before we kill them to eat them.“

Now, apparently, it is OK to raise cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys in crowded, congested, unhealthy conditions, and then slaughter them in an assemby-line fashion and eat them – when every state in the Union has anti-cruelty laws that prohibit such behavior directed toward puppies, kitties, and bunnies!

I have two little dogs that are beloved companions of mine – I’ve lived with dogs as companions most of my life. I – and most Westerners – couldn’t conceive of eating dogs. For us, it’s a clutural taboo.

And yet, there are places in the world where dogs are raised on farms exactly like cows, pigs, and chickens here in the US – specifically to be slaughtered at between six and 12 months of age for food.

That kind of blind hypocrisy makes me crazy. It can’t be OK to treat one set of animals this way, and prosecute people who treat another set of animals in the exact same way.

That kind of thinking, to me, is the same as extending one set of rights and privileges to one group of people, and denying them to another group based on whatever cultural habits you’re used to, whether that be race, nationality, sexual orientation or…whatever.

Listen. I don’t have to eat meat to be healthy. I’m a nurse, for crying out loud – I do my research.

And if I don’t have to do so to survive – when I can actually be healthier without eating meat – then why would I support the kind of cruelty and hypocrisy with my grocery dollars that I would never tolerate in any other situation?

Oh – and please? Don’t start licking your chops when you look at my puppies.

My daughter and I were discussing this this morning during our “morning coffee by cell phone” and she said to me, “I can’t imagine you ever discouraging me if I told you I wanted to be a mermaid when I was little.”

Hmmmmmm, I thought to myself, remembering when I myself was little, and had exactly two career plans: to be the lady who rides the elephants in the circus or to be a race car driver.

When Britt was in school, she had a friend who told all and sundry that he was going to be a rodeo clown when he grew up. And of course, all of his teachers and stuff pooh pooh’d him – nay, even laughed at him. Because what kind of job is that for a grown up?

Guess what this guy does today? He’s a rodeo clown. A bull fighter, to be more precise. And his mama is his biggest fan.

You know, I’m a nurse, and I’m going to be a nurse practitioner, so obviously I believe that nurses and lawyers and doctors and all that have their place in this world.

But when was the last time someone asked you what you did last weekend and you said, “Oh my goodness, we went to the doctor’s – you should have seen him? He was so amazing!”

Noooooo. That comment, I bet, was reserved for the mermaids.

And the singers. And the actors. And the server at your favorite restaurant who knew it was your anniversary and made it a memorable night that will stay with you forever.

I’ve never asked for a copy of my Xrays and had them framed and found just the perfect spot to haang them in my home.

But I have two walking sticks – tall, gnarled, twisted pieces of wood that someone with an artist’s eye discovered and polished and made beautiful. And they’re in my living room to look at and to run my hands over, to remind me that life is a journey, and that every journey can be arduous or it can be accompanied by beauty hiding in plain sight.

So to my friend, whose daughter wants to be a mermaid, I say thank you. The world will always have enough nuts and bolts, but a world without soul and beauty – without mermaids and wizards and angels and miracles – is a world none of us can live in.

It’s no secret in nursing circles that gerontological or even rehabilitative nursing is pretty low-prestige – all the nursing students want to be “where the action is” – delivering babies or working in the ER.

The elderly in long term care facilities are considered to be “there to die”.

I’m here to tell you today that the people I work with are living, baby!

Yes, I know our society has a fascination with youth. It makes me laugh when I see women’s magazines loudly proclaiming that Forty is the New Thirty! Really? Because I like the old forty. I don’t at all look my age (or act it, I’ve been told) but I’m not at all ashamed to tell you that I’m 49 years old. I’m pretty proud of having made it this far, considering some of the goofy things I’ve done in my life!

And with the advent of AARP and others, there is even a growing respect for some seniors: the ones they show in commercials being active and travelling and playing tennis and dancing the night away.

But what about what I would call the frail elderly? The ones who maybe can’t get up and down out of a chair anymore without help. Or the ones whose short term memory is toast, and they live with their memories instead of whatever is so dang important about what’s happening today.

I’ve had people tell me they don’t come to visit their relatives in the nursing home because “It’s just so hard to see Mom like that.”

Really, Princess? Because I can guarantee you that there were times in your life when you were inconvenient, hard to understand, and a real pain in the keester. And I’d bet good money that Mom didbn’t turn her face away from you during those times!

I had a drunk moron n a bar one time tell me that if he ever got to the point where his memory was shot and he couldn’t take care of himself, he’d rather be dead. Now, get this – this guy was pretty much drunk 2-3 times a week, had a college degree but worked construction because it easier mentally and required less responsibility, and had crappy relationships. And I thought to myself, “Seriously? You think you’re so much better off than the people I know?”

What are our criteria for what makes a live worth living – or valuable? Is it physical strength? I’m screwed – I can’t do one pull up I think. Is it bladder continence? Uh – then most of the women I know who’ve had kids are on the chopping block. Is it the ability to remember? I lost my scissors today while I was wrapping presents.

I know a lady who walks with a walker. She needs help to get out of a chair, and to get dressed. Her memory isn’t so good, but she is the happiest and most loving woman I’ve ever met. Every day, ten times a day, she says to me, “I love you. God bless you.”

Do you know why? Because she has time to say those things – she’s not running around trying to accomplish a hundred oh-so-important tasks every day. She knows she needs help, so she sits back graciously and lets people help her – and then thanks them lovingly when they do so.

So if you have relatives who are in the nursing home, please go visit them this year. DO NOT start the conversation by saying, “Do you know who I am?” This isn’t “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader” – have some manners and introduce yourself.

If they don’t remember all the details of your life, then bask in the reminder that you ain’t all that important in the grand scheme of things, and go with them wherever they are.

Bring a warm, snuggle sweater, or a fuzzy lap robe. Bring some of their favorite treat and diets-be-damned for a day or several. Meet the friends they eat their meals with and tell their secrets to.

I promise you – if you can let go of who they were and perhaps who YOU need them to be, and just get to know who they are today, you’re in for a treat yourself.

I love my job.

Otaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy. I honestly don’t know that I’ve ever done that – Lord, I think I wouldn’t want to know in some cases!

But it made me laugh thinking about what’s in mine. I mean, I am, after all, a self-proclaimed “Natural Nurse”, right?

My poor kids could tell you stories about how, when they were little, their mommy never took them to the doctor when they had sore throats and pink eye – I doctored them myself at home.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Allopathic medicine definitely has its place – but I also, as a nurse, can tell you that the overuse of antibiotics is a very serious problem, creating strains of supergerms that have adapted to become resistant to pretty much every antibiotic out there.

And supergerms can kill ya.

I didn’t want my kids to someday really need antibiotics, and find themselves in the position of being resistant to everything that could possibly save their lives.

I also didn’t want to wreck their little bellies and destroy the good stuff in their intestines that helps them absorb food.

And it worked – my kids – aged 29, 23 and 20 – are hardly ever sick, and even if they get a cold, it’s usually for a day. My grandkids, the same thing.

So, here is a short list of what’s in my medicine cabinet:

#1 – Colloidal Silver. This stuff is wunder-awesome – uber-effective – and whatever else you can create as a superlative. A smart, smart nurse named Susan offers this more complete info on her blog, but seriously, colloidal silver is one of the most studied things in the complementary health scene. It has antibacterial and antiviral properties. Which means it’s pretty much gopod for almost any minor thing that ails ya.

It was the treatment of choice at our house for pink eye – and worked. ever. single. time. I put some in water and had them gargle with it if they had sore throats. Three or four times a day.

#2 – Tea Tree Oil – Funny story here. My boys were wrestlers for, like, 10-12 years. Wrestlers get ringworm. And my boys got tea tree oil put on it anytime they got it – again – 3-4 times a day. It always cleared it up – it never left scars, which can happen with ringworm.

To this day, my daughter uses tea tree oil if she gets the rare blemish on her face. And it works.

But a word of caution – I would NOT use tea tree oil orally. Or, you know, drink it.

And #3 – Garlic Capsules and Vitamin C tablets. I get a cold about once every 2-3 years, and when I do, it makes me so darn mad! Like most of us, I don’t have time to be sick!

Someone taught me this 15 years ago, but when I feel a cold coming on, I start with a regimen of ONE garlic capsule and ONE 500 mg. tablet of Vitamin C every two hours with lots and lots and lots of water to drink. The garlic has antiviral properties – the Vitamin C assists your immune system in doing its job – and the water assists your body in flushing out the virus and the nasty toxins the virus produces that make you feel so much like poo.

That night I take a hot hot bath – as hot as I can stand it – and I get in bed under a mountain of covers. I am inducing a fever, because a fever is your body’s way of raising your body temperature so that the invading pathogen – the virus – can’t survive. I don’t take Tylenol or anything to reduce the fever, but I also keep an eye on it.

And there ya have it. By morning, if I do this, it’s gone. And I am smug. Because I’m like that.

#4 – Bach’s Rescue Remedy – I almost forgot this one – it’s my new favorite and I highly recommend everyone read up on it here.

Listen. I get tense sometimes. Usually at work. Or when my husband is in the ER for something – even something as simple as biffing it on the ice again. This stuff is heaven in a bottle. It’s calm focus in four drops.

What freaks me out is that it also works on pets. And pets, my darlings, have no idea about “placebo effect” or “Hawthorne effect”. The evidence is mounting and Bach Flower Essences have been in use for 70+ years. It doesn’t drug you up or hang you over – it just calms your emotions.

And who doesn’t need that sometimes in this crazy world?

OK, so I’m not a food stylist, and this picture sucks. But – look at those golden beauties on the right. Know what they are? They are dehydrated corn chips. And do you know what they contain?

CORN! As in, that’s it. Roughly six cups of corn, and a smidge of a left over onion, all whizzed up in my Vitamix and then spread out on dehydrator sheets and – um – dehydrated.

No oil, no frying, no preservatives. Oh – a little salt. Because I have way more of a salty tooth than a sweet one.

The business on the left is what a guacamole addict does when the larder is pretty bare – I called it guacasalsa because really all it is, is avocado, Roma tomato, and a smidge of minced garlic.

I’m pretty dang excited to have whipped up something healthy for myself that makes me feel indulgent and yummed!

That being said, being surrounded by a culture of Iowa meat-and-potato eaters with a generous helping of “anything goes if it tastes good” — and a poor ability to speak for myself and stand for myself until I hit this time in my life – I couldn’t do it. I caved and made boxed and canned stuff for meals for my family because that’s what everybody else eats.

I rediscovered my interest in raw foods as I was going through my graduate studies in nursing, reading my texts and discovering that – whoa – even conventional medical type texts tell you that well done meat is carcinogenic, and so on.

And so, like those of this computer age, I began searching for information online.

And got my butt kicked!

Not only is there an overabundance of information out there about raw food eating, but there is violent and vitrolic disagreement about how to do it right.

I mean, MEAN! Raw foodists accusing other raw foodists of “cheating by eating cooked foods” and even, in one shameful case, a prominent raw foodist making veiled references to “some really big people doing drugs”.

As a mother, I want to spank these misbehaving and mean little brats. As a person seeking information, I am discouraged and confused – all of which says, “Eat a cheeseburger and fuggetaboutit!”

I also was finishing up my third semester of graduate nursing school – and working full time and trying to throw together something resembling a cohesive Christmas. And I finally decided that I would wait until today – the day after all my finals and projects are submitted for the term – to sit down and get started off right.

And here are the things I’ve learned:\

I need to eat more. Because raw fruits and veggies contain a ton more nutrients per calorie and are naturally lower calorie than – say – a double Quarter Pounder, you have to eat more than you’re used to in volume. Otherwise, you’re going to end up hungry after a day or two, and start eating everything that isn’t nailed down.

Secondly, I read something from a very wise chickie named Swayze that resonated with me that said, “raw foods are not comforting. Unless you are eating lots of fatty, dehydrated “raw” dishes, you will never achieve that numbing sensation that you get from cooked comfort foods.”

She goes on to say, “When I went raw, I no longer got this sensation. I didn’t know how to relax without heavy cooked foods and this left me feeling very uncomfortable and emotionally empty.”

Thirdly, one of the things I became conscious of was a desire – a drive – to protect myself. To hold danger and insecurity at bay.

I don’t want to get sick and old before my time. I want to enjoy my life and my nursing career well into my sixties and beyond, and I don’t want to deal with what people consider to be age-related aches, pains and diseases, and I was trying to stave them off with raw foods.

And then I realized that death, illness, and tragedy can strike at any time – and that, while raw foods definitely can lessen the likelihood of a lot of autoimmune disorders and what we perceive to be “natural aging” – I could still get hit by a bus.

I’ve changed my focus now to wanting to eat raw for how it makes me feel today. I’m calmer by a country mile – I’m a ton more energetic. The excess weight melts away effortlessly, I sleep better, I handle stress better and I look fantastic when I eat raw.

There is a lot of information available out there to guide an aspiring raw foodist but the most important advice is to listen to your own body. I love avocados with an entirely unnatural love – but I find that if I eat too much fat – even great raw fat – I start to have some distressing symptoms. So I’m learning to adjust my diet myself that way.

I also am giving myself permission to have a learning curve. When your mama taught you to make spaghetti with prepackaged spaghetti and canned sauce, it takes a little time to adjust to the different rhythms of chopping and soaking and preparing food. It can be done, but it’s not ZAP and you speak a totally new language fluently and master a totally new set of skills automatically.

So that’s where I am. Beginning again, but this time with a little more humility, more humor, and more Zen.

Bon appetit!

But first, I had to finish my last assignment before the final for my End of Life nursing class, and I enjoyed the process so much, I thought I’d share it with you. The assignment was to write my own obituary if I did right now.

Therefore, I give you, Nanna’s obituary:

Nanna, 49, died Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at home of an intellectual aneurysm while preparing her end-of-term projects at Allen College.

Nanna was born June 20, 1960 in Chicago, Illinois to her parents: Kenneth and Norma “Kris” (Derbyshire) Hausman. The family moved to Waterloo, Iowa, in 1967 and Nanna graduated from West Waterloo High School in 1978. She received her Associate Degree in Nursing in 1991 from Hawkeye Community College, and worked as a registered nurse in the area, most recently at Maple Manor Village in Aplington for the past five years.

She returned to school in January 2009 at Allen College enrolled in the RN to MSN program with plans to work after graduation as a nurse practitioner serving small, rural and medically underserved areas and people. She also served on the volunteer Grundy Center Ambulance since moving to Grundy Center in 2006 and worked to improve quality access to care for the people of Grundy Center.

Of all of the rich and varied relationships in her life, the most significant one was when she married Mr. Nanna at their home on June 21, 2008 in Grundy Center, IA. Melissa was gifted with three children by birth in her life: Britt (Jared) of Orlando, FL; Jay (Bre), of Iowa City; and Creed at home. She also received two children as wedding presents: Terra (Troy) of Holland, and Shane (Ashley) at home. She was further blessed by the birth of four grandchildren: Devin and Emma of Orlando, FL, and Sarah and Pete of Holland, IA. All of these miraculous people survive Nanna in death and will be her legacy to the world forever.

In addition, she is survived by legions of beloved friends, extended family, coworkers, classmates and instructors who partnered with her in caring for the sick, encouraging the people around her, and making this a better world, with the overriding goal of ensuring that no man or woman felt alone or unheard in her presence, and all came away with the assurance of being appreciated and enjoyed.

Nanna was preceded in death by both of her parents, all of her grandparents, and far too many friends and patients to list here.

The Catholic funeral mass will be celebrated Friday, December 18 at 11:00 am at St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church in rural Grundy County, with interment following at the Grundy Center Cemetery. Family and friends are invited to gather for visitation and celebration of Nanna’s life and relationships on Thursday, December 17, from 6 pm to 9 pm at Engelkes-Abels Funeral Home in Grundy Center.

I was also asked to write what I would want as an epitaph on my tombstone. Mine is simple:

Wow! What a ride!

Ten years ago today, a miracle occurred. It was a small miracle in the hustle and bustle of daily life – one easily overlooked by the sort of people who overlook miracles. But in the grand scheme of things, it was a huge miracle.

Today, ten years ago, was born one of three people who have changed my fundamental understanding of whom I am on this earth. Ten years ago, I became a Nanna – continuing on the legacy of my mother before me and her mother before her – and it was when my oldest child gave birth to her oldest child.

Devin Lee was named after me because my middle name is Lea – which is something I always thought was very cool.

And his mother is right. He was an absolutely gorgeous baby. Like, eerily perfect, with Gerber baby skin and features. And of course I loved him from the start with a deep, primal fierceness.

But in all honesty, it was when he started getting older that he really got under my skin and buried into my myocardium. When he started talking, and expressing all the multitudes of things that were going on inside his little head – and buddy, this person has a ton of stuff going on inside his head!

One time when Devin was about six, he and his mother and I were in the car together, and Devin and I were just rappin’ away about life and love and dreams, and his mother looked back at me and said, “Mom! Quit trying to turn my son into a hippie!”

And Devin and I just looked at each other and smiled.

Devin is the person who taught me that I have my very own clearly defined place in this big old universe. I’m not the center of the universe, but my place is secure. I matter. I am his Nanna. I will always be his Nanna. And when I am gone and he is a grandfather himself, he will remember his Nanna. Devin has made me immortal.

I miss him so badly today. I want to sit down and hear his thoughts about how things work and, more importantly for Devin, how things should work.

While he is still only ten, I want to snuggle up with him on a couch and hear him laugh out loud at something on TV. I want to tell him that he is special, but that other people are incredibly special too, and to teach him how to seek out the “special” in other people and, in so doing, enrich his own life.

I don’t feel a need to protect him. He has his psycho primitive feral mother who will do that, and his rock-solid Daddy.

I want to be the person in his life that makes room for him to shine, exactly how he is.

Your Nanna loves you, little man. I always will. Happy Birthday – and thank you for making my life complete.