Good morning! It's COLD outside! It was -6 when I drove my husband and son this morning. Being outside is not pleasant whatsoever. And next Wednesday, the forecast says the high will be -9. YIKES.
Now, I generally don't mind cold weather, but this is a little ridiculous! I'm thankful for my toasty warm house and lots of blankets to snuggle under (and leftovers for dinner tonight so that I don't have to cook and can stay snuggled underneath!). I've got a list of things to do today, but right now, all I want to do is huddle under my blanket!
Here's a few of the interesting things I dug up online this week.
*The skyrocketing costs of insulin*
This is something that worries me greatly. My father is a type 1 diabetic, and if you're not familiar with diabetes, type 1 is insulin-dependent and that won't ever change. All the news about insulin lately- the ridiculous costs of it (which have risen far more than can be accounted for by inflation; one type of insulin has seen a price increase of over 1000% in the past twenty years that also can't be accounted for by increased production costs), the stories of people who have had to ration it, the articles about people who died because they hadn't been able to afford it- it scares me, badly.
Diabetics need insulin to survive. They're guaranteed customers for these companies, and yet these companies price their product so far out of reach that people are dying and the companies are killing off their own customer base in the name of corporate greed. How is this not murder? At the very least, they're shooting themselves in the foot. Price it lower and everyone will be able to pay. Price it higher and your customer base starts dying because they can't pay for it. This doesn't seem like a difficult decision to me, but then again I'm not full of corporate greed and desperate to make a profit no matter how many people I kill off.
*The Limits of Home Cooking*
I cook almost every night of the week, unless there are leftovers. Occasionally we'll go out, but we try to make it a special treat and only go to restaurants that have things I can't prepare at home (or at least successfully prepare at home! I LOVE Indian food and make some of my own, but that's one of the few things that tastes better when someone else makes it. If anyone has a suggestion for a really great vegetarian Indian cookbook, I'm all ears). But I do realize that my ability to make full, healthy meals at home every night comes from a place of privilege. We're incredibly lucky that my husband's salary is enough that I can stay home and have the time to cook from scratch, and that we can afford healthy food. We're incredibly lucky that I was raised in a family where education was valued and that I learned the skills necessary in order to be able to learn and teach myself new skills (and that my ability to learn wasn't compromised by childhood trauma). Not everyone is that lucky, and while too many people in the food industry (Michael Pollan, I'm looking at you) seem to think that if women would just start roasting free range chickens every night, all our societal problems would be solved, but the answer just isn't that simple.
Who cooks when you're working 72 hours a week on your feet? How do you prepare a healthy meal when you have a 3 hour commute? If your landlord hasn't fixed your busted oven in three months and all you have is a single hotplate and three hungry kids who also need help with their homework, what do you do? It's not just that people can't or don't want to cook; our society often works against those with more difficult lives, to prevent them from cooking. My husband used to say things like, "Poor people just need to plan better and do things like use a crockpot!" And then we added our daughter to the family (which means less sleep), he got a different job with an increased workload and a longer commute, and he finally admitted that if I weren't around to cook dinner every night, he'd probably just feed everyone crap like pizza rolls constantly because he's just too tired to cook. There's a lot that needs to be changed in our society so that everyone can prepare healthy, well-balanced homemade meals every night.
The book referenced in the article doesn't come out until March and I absolutely plan on reading it. Food politics is a subject that has long fascinated me, and this book looks really interesting.
*15 Stats That Show Americans Are Drowning in 'Stuff''*
'Look around,' the meme says. 'All that stuff used to be money.'
Even as I purge more and more of our belongings, we've still got too much stuff. Most likely, you do too. How did we get like this? What makes us want to collect stuff like a squirrel collects nuts?
The picture in that article? That looks almost identical to what my daughter's room looked like before I overhauled it this week. Toys scattered all over the floor, mixed in with each other, and an overwhelmed child right in the middle of it all. All those extra toys weren't making her happy, and all that extra stuff isn't making us happy either.
These stats are jarring and they're going to be something I keep considering as I continue to pare down the stuff we own. I'm already seeing the positive effects of cutting down the number of toys in my daughter's room- she's less prone to drawn-out tantrums this week, she's more engaged with the toys she does have in there, I'm less cranky because I don't have to spend thirty minutes every day cleaning her room- and I expect these trends will continue the more I weed out stuff we don't truly need.
And on a lighter note...
*Dog Accidentally Runs Half-Marathon After Being Let Out For Pee, Finishes 7th*
Good boy! :D
April Hamlin let her dog out to go potty one morning and to her surprise, her dog ran an entire half-marathon and came home with a medal. Now that's some determination! I haven't been able to stop laughing at this since I saw it. Dogs are the best. :)
And that's it for today! May you have a warm weekend no matter what the weather, and I'll see you on Monday. :)
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