Forced to get a car

I am really pissed off right now because everyone that is working with my husband on base is pressuring him into getting a freaking car. When I was talking about moving here to someone, they said that I would want to have a car because everything is spread out. You know what?! We’re doing just fine without a car because we’re in the middle of everything. Apparently they scolded him for not getting a ride around base when he had to do things. “Why didn’t you get a ride?” He had a rain coat. What business of theirs is it? Sure they need to make sure that he’s safe, but we have all the safety gear we need for bikes. Plus, we ride mainly on sidewalks and residential streets. This makes me so mad, their mentality is so lazy! Where I come from (the West Coast) it’s really difficult to bike because there are so many hills. Here, it’s perfect for biking, yet I hardly see even half the people riding bikes that do on the west coast. We’re saving money on gas and insurance because we want to pay off our student loans in 3 years or less. We do not have the money for a car, we have no need for a car because we are not going to movies (closest movie theater is 10 miles away), we don’t go to the casino EVERYTHING WE NEED IS WITHIN TWO FREAKING MILES! It’s none of your GODDAMN business how we get around as long as we’re doing it safely.

If you couldn’t tell, this is really making me mad because they are getting in MY way of paying off my student loans early. We’re going to see if getting a moped scooter will get them off his back, because the higher ups are starting to get on his case. That’s $700-$1000 (with titles, tags, and such) that could go towards our loans. Of course, we’ll take it out of our car fund, because with a scooter it would just prolong the lack of need for a car. Insurance wouldn’t be too bad, neither would gas, most scooters get 85 mpg. So financially, we can do a scooter, but it just really pisses me off the idea that we need a car. As I said before EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING is within two miles of us, which is nothing on a bike, especially on flat land. It’s like it’s not safe on the streets without a car. I mean, we have more safety gear than most people I’ve seen on bikes in this area. I really want to go into his shop and bitch slap those assholes because they’re too lazy to even think of riding a bicycle everywhere. Or maybe ring their necks. Some sort of violent thing. With lots of yelling. And swearing. Because that seems to be the only way to get a point across to them.

Of course I would never do any of that because, truthfully, I am not a violent person. That and I would get arrested for trespassing and assaulting a member(s) of the Air Force. I am letting my rage out on here so it does not build up.

Truthfully, a scooter really wouldn’t be that bad, because we would probably only use one tank a month – him going to and from work. It just bugs me that they are trying to get him to “be like everyone else”. Well, everyone else is broke, in debt up to their eyeballs with no plan to get out of it, and has a multitude of diseases and health problems that they’re just treating the symptoms instead of the actual cause. Why should we be like them? I want to be myself.

It’s been a while

Forgive me for the leave of absence, I am finally getting back on my feet after moving.

Moving is a tiring process, even when you try to do it wholistically. It was really nice to have someone else do the packing for us, but gauze do they use a lot of packing material. There’s no way for us to unpack everything all at once because there is so much packing paper that it fills up our garbage cans too quickly.

Oh yeah…that’s the downside to the area I live, there’s no recycle pick-up, so I have to throw everything away. I plan on getting/making a compost container and getting some worms for that, so that will help stop waste. Target also seems to have a small recycling center, so I will check into that as well. It still really irks me that they don’t have recycling, but it is a smaller city in Oklahoma. Apparently OKC has it. Still, I will do what I can.

We no longer have a car. On the first day we were here, we bought ourselves a couple of bicycles, got some gear for them and ride them where needed. Jason gets a ride to work and we ride everywhere else. It really helps that we have a place that is smack dab in the middle of everything, roughly two miles from everything we need. Closer to two different dollar-type stores. The downside is when it rains and that I have to go shopping more than once a week. I tried to do a weeks worth of shopping on Tuesday, that did not work out so well. The backpack was at least 50 pounds. Riding a bike 2-3 miles with 50 pounds on your back makes for an interesting experience.

Because of the humidity, our windows have mold/mildew growing on them. I successfully washed one with dish soap and vinegar, but I’m eager to try a product I found online called Eco-me that uses their own little formula (tea tree oil, lavender, rosemary, and lemongrass) with vinegar, baking soda, olive oil, and water. Jason wanted to get some hard-core mold remover, but I said no and said I would look up natural ways. Tea tree oil, grapefruit seed extract and vinegar all seemed to be the top ones. The only problem with vinegar is that it only works on 82% of molds. Tea tree oil and grapefruit seed extract are expensive. Of course you don’t need to use that much (2 teaspoons to 2 cups of water), but I really liked the idea of Eco-me. I will write a review once I get it and use it.

As part of being wholistic, we try to use as little water and electricity as possible, but now we have even more of a reason to – we have to pay all the utilities. So we both take 5 minute-or-less showers, I have a dish pan to collect water, we unplug everything when not in use, including the stove and washing machine, we have CFL’s in all of our rooms, and only one light when there are two sockets, we only have a washer and only wash using cold water. The electric company said that the previous renters’ average bill was $140, because it is central heating and cooling. The windows here are really drafty, so we are going to look into some covers, which would unfortunately mean we couldn’t open them. But it will definitely be needed during the winter.

During the past week, I haven’t taken any vitamin D, because it had been sunny and we had been riding our bikes. But when the sun stopped, I forgot to start taking it again. I can definitely notice the difference it makes with my mood and motivation for getting things done, not to mention health,

Junk Food Addiction

Let me just saw WOW! This article on Science Daily is a real eye opener about processed foods.

The basics of the article is that junk food, or pleasurable food, is addictive, the way cocaine is, and leads to over-consumption of these foods, which causes obesity. Scientists at Scripps Research Institute have finished a three-year study on rats that prove this. They found that when the mice ate high calorie, high fat food whenever they wanted because they had easy access to it, the rats lost all control of their eating habits. When the scientists tried to put those rats back on a healthy diet, the rats would not eat the food. Even when the scientists tried shocking the rats when they over ate, they would continue eating.

What they found in the brain itself was similar to that of someone who is addicted to cocaine. The main receptor responsible for addiction to drugs is called the dopamine D2 receptor. The amount of these receptors is reduced when a person is addicted to something, like in the case of cocaine. These receptors get turned off because they are overstimulated by a rush of dopamine, the pleasure hormone/neurotransmitter. That is how the body adjusts to the over-stimulation.

So now you have proof that junk food is addictive, that includes all the food products that have sugar and high fructose corn syrup. No wonder people have such a hard time changing their life style.