Primitive Wood Shelf

We went to the yurt for the long weekend, and I brought along a wood shelf that sits next to the wood stove. It's been annoying me for a while that wood just gets set on the floor and little wood bits go everywhere. So hopefully this will keep things a little more contained. I made it to be the same height as the stove because we often do camp-style cooking (pots of chili, Dinty Moore stew, etc.) and need a place to set the spoons. I'll have to find a tray to put on top of it so that it doesn't get all gloppy.
     
This fan is perhaps the coolest thing we've gotten for the yurt. The heat from the stove usually just stays right around the stove area, and the other side of the room can get a bit chilly. Being off the grid and all, we were hooking up a little electric fan to a car battery to get the air to circulate. When we found out about this Vulcan stove fan that runs with a Stirling engine off the heat of the stove (no electricity needed!), and the timing of our discovery coincided with my hubby's birthday, it was kind of a no-brainer.
  
  
  

Bookshelf Bench

I don't know, but I may have found my new addiction. I promised my kids I'd make them bookshelves they could sit on. I've made two so far and have one more to go, but I don't think I'll be able to stop at just one more. Everywhere I turn in my house I see another wall or corner where a bookshelf bench would be just perfect.

Deliberate Self Care: Seek and You Shall Find

Happy spring!  It's been a while since I've popped by here, but I have good reasons.  In the past four months, we've undergone four tonsillectomies in this family (one of them mine).  Sigh.  And you thought I'd been swallowed up by old man winter.  It's been hard for me to visit this space because my life and thoughts have been dominated by health issues, and I don't want to clutter my blog with them. Not all of the health issues are mine either, so I don't feel at liberty to share here.

But this is something that I can share:  per doctor's orders I underwent a genetic test for the MTHFR mutation and as it turns out I've been living my entire life only able to process about 30% of the B12 and folate that come through my system. B12, which is responsible for so much in terms of nerve cells, the immune system, formation of red blood cells, DNA replication, and SAM-E (mood regulation, hello????).

The same goes for folate.

I'm an undermethylator. In non-med speak, when you eat food that contains B12 or folate, the body needs to turn it into a form that it can use: methyl B12 or methyl folate. Since I have a genetic mutation (yes, it is as we all feared: I'm a mutant)  I have been essentially starving for these vitamins. It doesn't matter how much "healthy food" I eat or how much B12 goodness is in my multivitamin...30% is all I can get out of it.

Fortunately, there is a very easy fix for this. Instead of cyanocobalamin, which is the B12 in my multivitamin, I need to take methylcobalamin, which is already in a form my body can use. According to my doctor, the optimum way to get this is by subcutaneous injection.  So giving myself butt-shots is my new way of life, and it's OK, because I need it. As for the methyl folate, I can take that in capsule form.  I've been doing this treatment for three months now, and despite the craziness that's been going on, I feel like this was my best Seattle winter ever.  My head is above water...I'm a little more even tempered, and I even sometimes feel high-school giddy (haven't felt that since, um, high school).

It's crazy to think that in the past few months I've been making life changes to find an answer to my doldrums--more sleep, no caffeine, more exercise, happy light, chia, fish oil... To think that THIS may be what I've been looking for all along. But instead of finding it (and tell me, what are the chances I would have found this one on my own?), it found me. Weird and wonderful how that works.

Alrighty then, I'm eager to get back to the old blog.  I've missed being here and hope to make it back more often.