the food we ate and the food we eat today

Dick Van Dyke show {circa 1961}

I positively adore this show from the 60's. I've spoken about it before. It's a wholesome reminder of a time when things were just... simple. They were perfectly simple.

But this isn't truly about this show and my love for all things vintage... not really anyway.

There are several times in this show where Rob will come into the kitchen where Laura is cooking, and he'll grab a carrot or a piece of celery out of the grocery bag and eat it. Seems innocent enough. But he does this without washing it or peeling it or preparing it in anyway at all. In this day of people becoming sick from things like e coli or salmonella almost every month of the year because they didn't properly wash their veggies, well... you should wash any and all vegetables you purchase from the store in today's crazy world of people tainting food and not storing/shipping/making things properly.

As a vegetarian {since the age of 11} i know what ingredients are inside of a number of products that i ate as a child that i wouldn't even let my enemies eat today because i know what is truly inside of it. Jello is made from boiled and ground up animal bones. I remember eating a lot of Jello as a child. Twinkies are made from beef fat {that cream filling isn't made from milk/cream!} And i could go on with several other foods that i use to enjoy. Not to go all Vegan on this entry, but the things that are in the foods we ate and still eat are kind of nasty!

The entire point of this entry is this... times use to be more simple. People back then thought in simple terms. Food was just that, Food. They bought it, ate it... and didn't think much about where it came from or how it was processed or much of anything. The people of that generation happily bought into the happy ad's selling the items as wholesome and healthy. They didn't worry too much about the bad stuff that was in foods.

With that being said, when i was a kid we got our Milk from local farmers. We bought our eggs from the farmers down the street. We had a garden and my mom canned a LOT of our foods that we ate all winter long. I do not recall having soup from a store can that often, but made from vegetables from a glass jar off the shelf in the basement. Now you might think that i was a kid in the 50's with my talking like this, but i was born in the mid 70's. This all took place in the 80's. We were somewhat poor, this is how we ate to survive. But we did eat things like jello and twinkies and hot dogs and even Spaghetti O's.

Each week i go to the store and i purchase foods that nourish us, while they poison us. Whatever your belief or stance on being a vegan, a vegetarian, or even a full blown meat eater... the plain and simple fact is this - most of the foods we eat are BAD for us. They are full of added sodium's, added fats, and added junk that the human body doesn't need.

I don't mean for this to come off as a complaint, because i am happy to know what is in the foods we eat today. I like reading the labels and figuring out if it is something i would feed my family or not. Back then, they didn't have the kinds of labels we have today. They blindly just ate their food and either liked it and bought it again, or hated it and didn't purchase it again. But there are times when i feel like my personal supply of food is dwindling to only RAW, organic, farmers market purchased food.  There are times when it might be nice to just not know what is really in the foods that i use to love to eat. To just forget that the yummy onion soup i use to LOVE to eat is made of beef broth. Forget about the jello that i use to love is made from animal bones, and so on...

but i can't forget. somethings are just to nasty to ignore and put into my body.

***
Edited to add: i just made rice crispy treats with my daughter last night. And somehow i never {ever} read the package of marshmallows. Perhaps i just adored them too much and was afraid to learn what was inside of them? Or maybe deep down i knew that i shouldn't be eating them. Nothing that sugary/yummy can be good for you or made from anything natural found on this earth.

Sure enough, ingredient # 3 is Gelatin. One of the main ingredients in Marshmallow's is Gelatin? {made from boiled, ground up animal bones} yuck! i will never fully enjoy another cup of hot chocolate again.

Who we create for sculpts our way of thinking about being creative

Once upon a time i use to create art on a daily basis. It grounded me, yet kept my spirits soaring high above the world at the same time. i created for me and only for me. Then i started working in the field of art and my love of creating just for me went from joy to discontent.

Over the past 2 years i have failed to stay on any task of creating art that was not for someone else. I miss creating, just to create. No deadline. No angry boss. No "it has to be THIS way!" Just creating because i wanted to see a finished product and sit back and say to myself, "i did that."

for fun:

for work:

something about having to work within the confines of what someone else tells me is Art... i get fed up with it. So i quit.

i think i am ready to get back into the creating just for me atmosphere. it might take me awhile to get back into a groove where i do not feel like what i am doing is work and not fun... but darn it, i miss creating graphics for just me!

i'll keep you posted on how it goes. right now i've got real work to do.

all grown up with attitude issues...

It seems like we have become our parents age... whether we want to accept that we are old fart parents or not, we are the same age they were when we looked up to them as children and thought, "man, you guys are really... old!" We also thought that they were very uncool.

I get frustrated when people ask me "awe, is this your little sister?" 
when meeting Claire and i. 

I went through 3 days of labor, wiped her ass everyday for almost 3 years, helped her learn to read/write/draw/etc. Not to mention that i have managed to keep her alive to the ripe age of 11 {and many more years to come!}. So, when people ask if we are sisters i snap back and say, "NO, i'm her mother." because i've more than earned the right to call myself her mom.

There is something that i am sure is inside of all of us moms... that desire to still be young and somewhat hip to what is going on in the world.  A desire to feel young, to look young, and to some degree still act young. We each have a bit of youth inside of us, its how we show it that counts either towards us or against us. We all talk on twitter, clearly a place where youth hang out {Justin Bieber isn't trending daily for nothing!}. We all drink soda, eat junk food, talk to our friends about the cool things we read online, and most of us tweet about our fascination with the Twilight crowd {be it pro or con}. And for the most part, we each hold our lives together by a thread just hoping that no one will notice that we truly do not have it all together. But that is us... the mom's of this generation.

June Cleaver, Leave it to Beaver. Circa 1957.

I love to look back at the moms of the 1950's and imagine what it would have been like to be a mom back then. Would i have been that rebel mom who wore pants to pick up my kid at school because i was too busy to frill myself up with a dress? Would my hair have been all done up, or a mess? Or would i have fallen in line with the rest of them looking like a cookie cutter image of June Cleaver?

I try to not look at anyone in the hollywood crowd as a role model or example of what it is like to be a mom or a person of the same age as me {35} because lets face it... Tv is not always based on real life, and people who live the life of a celebrity are not {for the most part} "real" moms with the same day-to-day struggles the rest of us moms have in our lives. I do not have a nanny, a maid, or anyone to help me with my kid - just me {ok, hubby counts towards 15% of the raising time}. So it is unfair to compare myself to people who are not like me in anyway... but last night we sat down to watch a movie. We watched Never Been Kissed and all of it's dorky glory. Claire turns to me and asks "how old is Drew Barrymore?" i had to think for a minute because she is one of those actors who never age in hollywood. They are not married, have no kids, and still look and live like a 20 year old. So we looked it up... 

Drew Barrymore, 2010, age 35.

She is my exact age {a few months older to be exact}. Yes, the exact same age as me. Yet, she looks and acts so much younger. And i look, act, and feel so old! How can it be that she looks so amazing and yet i look so blah? Oh, wait... it's that darn kid isn't it... having a kid stresses you out daily and makes you just look and feel --- old!

As i sit her feeling like an old lady, yet still feeling like i have not yet grown up yet or even figured out what i want to be when i grow up... i find it unfair that my kid looks up to me and thinks the same thing i did when i was her age as i looked up at my parents, "man, you are old!"

xoxo

MB

you remind me of...

it is hard to pin point a person's complete persona and see it in another person. Yet people often say to me, "you remind me so much of *fill in person's name here..." This is a phrase that i never (or rarely) use in life, because no one person is fully like another person in the way that they act.

So unlike looks, you are unable to fully grasp the understanding of what they are talking about when they say something about your being like someone that they know. I've gotten the "you look just like..." and they were able to show me a photo and say, "see!" and expect me to just accept that i look like this person that they know. But a way of acting like someone... this is much harder to translate and if you are not careful, you can insult the heck out of someone.

This tends to often be the case when it comes to me. I am a riddle wrapped inside of an enigma! i am kind, but i am a cold hearted bitch. i am laid back, but uptight. i am a hippy but i am a preppy snob. i am a whole ball of random things! More often than not people pick my "nice/hippy/earth-loving" side to say i am like someone that they know. Which i take this to mean that they see the good in me and not the nasty - thank God! ;-)

However... when i meet the people they say that i am like, they are always whack-a-doodles! you know, those overly friendly, earth-loving, almost stoned acting people. Crystals and moon-beam people. And not that there is anything wrong with people like that... but it is SOOooOoOooO not who i am. i do my best to not take offense to them seeing me as that kind of a person, but often i think "what the f***?! am i really seen as a freak by the people i know and love?"

Part of me thinks i should stop doing so many kind things. Hide the fact that i am a vegan. Put away the buddha statues. Wear less jeans and t-shirt outfits. and never ever mention a thing about moon-beams... or crystals. ha!

so in the future, if you know me... and you THINK that you know me... trust me, you don't know crap if you think i am like the psychic you saw that one time in Vegas.

the journey...

photo taken by me in Santa Cruz 2010, "the teal chair"

life takes you on journeys, down paths that lead you nowhere, down paths that lead you somewhere, down paths that lead you to new paths, and sometimes down paths that lead you astray. we each must figure out what the path is leading us to. If you shut yourself off from the lessons that life is teaching you... if you forget to live life each day... to learn... then you will never understand why you are on the road you are on.

sometimes we mistake the message, and it is not until we are on another path in life that we truly understand what the previous path(s) were teaching us in our life. There aren't many "signs" in the roads of life... but, it is up to you to read them, to interpret them, and to turn them into meaning. For without understanding the meaning, the messages are lost and without translation into your life.

it would be nice to travel high above the road to only observe the sights on your path. Never to be trampled. Never to be ignored. Never to be looked upon with hateful eyes. Never to be in the wrong. Never truly experience the life. But then... where is the fun in that? Life has meanings hidden inside of every tiny detail. If you only observe, then you will not learn. Life is lived through lessons. If you do not learn, you do not live. this includes those lessons that pain you. Just know that you will recover to live another day. And you will take the pain and turn it into something!

mistake me...

When you look at someone, what do you see? Can you look past the ethnic color or their skin, the ethnic shape of their face, and all of the other characteristics that set us all apart?

It's a long running "joke" on Tv shows where people say things like, "you all look alike to me" to people of other races. But i have never got this joke. People all have characteristics that make them different from others - no matter what their race.

The reason i am bringing this up is that i had someone mistake me for someone else the other day....

unknown girl: hey, can you give me my ticket?
me: i'm sorry, i do not know you. *feeling awkward*
unknown girl: just give me my ticket to the movie so i can go in.
me: let me rephrase this... i do not know you and you do not know me...
*people all around us starting to stare and making me feel weird*
unknown girl: what? c'mon just give me my ticket, Britney.
me: *laughing a bit* i've never met you... and i don't have a ticket for you.
Michael: what's going on?
unknown girl: wait. what?
unknown girl #2: Hey! i've got your ticket right here!
unknown girl: oops, sorry!

This girl was standing as close to me as another person can get. We looked each other in the eye several times during our small back and forth. Plenty of opportunity for her to look me in the eyes and figure out that i was not the person she was with at the theatre - which was the person holding her ticket.

The girl who yelled to her that she had her ticket was much shorter than me. Anyone who had stood next to the other girl and then next to me would have noticed the extreme height difference.  The other girl had brown eyes. My eyes are bright blue/grey. True that we were both pale white girls. And true we both had longish brown hair. Beyond the hair, we looked nothing alike.

The girl who mistook me for another person was asian, but from America. Her english was perfect. She was in her mid to late 20's and seemed intelligent enough.

So is it true that for the most part, people of the same race see people of other races as looking all the same? And if so, how shallow is that.

I admit that i sometimes think i see people i know from a great distance and might even shout their name. But i won't argue with someone standing 1 foot in front of me that i know them. If i am that close, i can tell if i do or do not know them from memory. i have a strange knack for never forgetting a face. i drive hubby kind of crazy because if i see a child act in a movie (even if i have not seen it since i was a kid) and they are in another movie all grown up, i can pick them out and proof that they are the same person. Although it gets hard sometimes because hollywood loves to hire people who "look" like people just to have that effect on their movie. But when it comes to faces, i can just remember people. i might not always remember their name... but i will never forget their face.

Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco

We LOVED the Renegade Craft Fair! All of the booths, the colors, the amazing designs... it was a perfect day! And what could be better than having this photo for our memory of the day...

If there is a Renegade near you anytime soon, you should totally go!