Barefoot Girevik

If you have been following my blog, you may have noticed, well, nothing for the last couple weeks.  For that I am sorry.  December is extremely busy for me and I haven't been near the computer other than checking the spelling of a friend or family member's name on Facebook because I blanked while writing their card.  In our family there are 3 birthdays in a span of 3 days in December so when you add birthday parties to the countless Christmas parties and Holiday celebrations, the baking, home crafted gifts, shopping, wrapping and decorating, somewhere, something is going to be pushed aside.  All of that brings me to my reason for writing today.  I want to give you some ideas to survive the Holiday season somewhat unscathed.  First of all, make lists.  When you have 25 tasks rolling around in your head it is so easy to stress over finishing them.  When you make a list you can prioritize, start at the first one and work your way down.  Checking things off as you go also gives

In October, AGATSU started a Paleo Nutrition Challenge.  I didn't sign up for it for various reasons but it intrigued me enough to do a Paleo Challenge of my own.  I bought a couple of books about Paleo (complete with recipes and meal plans) as a pre-reward for finishing the challenge.  I figure if I reward myself before I start something I have to finish it.  I think you have to be very dedicated - or slightly insane - for that kind of logic to work. For those of you who don't know what a Paleo Diet is, it is basically eating the way our cavemen ancestors did.  There are some different versions of Paleo out there.  Some allow dairy products, although I don't think our ancestors were brave enough to just stroll up to the wild version of what we call cows today and just start yanking on parts of it's anatomy to see what came out.  Others allow clarified butter and bacon is quite common in a lot of the information out there.  Some information I found allowed beans and o