Four Noble Truths

1. Fear is far more contagious than a flu virus.
2. Soap and water are just as effective as expensive alternatives.
3. Journalists remain the stupidest creatures on the planet.
4. Turning off the bathroom faucets with one's elbows can cause serious injury to the nose - not worth it.

Waking Up with Energy - The Paradox of Sugar

 I sold out at an early age.

Our blood sugar goes up by 50 points during a meal, and that is good. Salesmen buy lunch for potential customers because people feel much better when they are eating.

Our complex, divinely engineered bodies also have controls to make us aware of our misuse of food. I have been looking into this because of higher blood sugar matched by lower energy and various side effects, whether potential or incipient.

Starting the day sugar-centric is appealing but energy draining. Coffee with danish, toast, cinnamon rolls or fresh donuts is tempting, difficult to deny when offered. Black coffee, often prepared by barbarians, is strong, bitter, and aching for sweetness. Some add sugar, sugar substitutes, and fake cream to the coffee.

High glycemic (sugary) food gives instant energy, but the insulin from our pancreas beats it down quickly. The peak is high and short-lived. Long-term high blood sugar levels reduce potassium, which is essential for good energy. Therefore, the donut shoppe breakfast is deadly for energy the rest of the day.

I have also found that starting with dessert foods (toast, donuts, rolls, pancakes) will create a slump and a craving for more of the same, such as a good lunch topped with a mega-dessert.

A sugary food day is the worst way to get things done. In contrast, looking for long-term, level blood sugar days is going to produce great results and reduce binge eating to "Yuk!" A good breakfast avoids sugar, corn syrup, and high glycemic foods:

• Breakfast cereal - useless dessert flakes with milk and sugar added. 
• White bread products and (sob) donuts. Fortunately, donuts are so poorly made around here that there is no temptation.
• Fruit juice is really a flavored serving of sugar water. Note how many juices start with water and high fructose corn syrup.

A much better breakfast:

1. Coffee, black, made from freshly ground beans. I make ours with a pour-over device, a plastic funnel lined with filter paper. A little kettle turns off at the right moment. It reminds me of OJ fanatics - "A little pot is soon hot." Great coffee does not require cream, sugar, or fake sweetness from chemists.
2. Almonds and walnuts have many great nutritional values.
3. Eggs are high in protein but do not stick to the ribs, as they say, unless eaten with a small portion of dark bread and butter.
4. Fruit is far better than fruit juice. Bananas rot too fast. We buy berries, apples, and oranges/tangerines. Old fruit goes outside for the critters. I put three withered apples on the bird feeding area. One by one they disappeared. 
5. Fiber in the diet is necessary, and the coffee shop diet does nothing to provide that. Fresh fruit can be supplemented with delicious prunes and BelVita fiber crackers.

Getting Up Before the Birds

One day, these young squirrels ran away but stuck around to be the first ones back at the food.

I wake up around 5 AM and make pour-over coffee. Sassy walks into the kitchen and I pretend to be startled. She smiles some days. On other days, she looks at me like, "Old joke. Try harder." She smiled this morning and she got her usual allotment of 1/2 Johnsonville brat in small slices.

Most birds are not up before dawn. They enjoy feeding on a bright, sunny morning. I have a bargain mix of corn and peanuts in the shell for them. Another bag has shelled peanuts, various dried fruits, and sunflower seeds.

One morning there were leftover tangerine halves plus the bargain mix on both garbage barrel tops. The scene was quite funny. The squirrel was boldly eating, sitting up. Starlings tried to dive bomb him off the barrel. Only a few inches away, a blue jay called out at him and jumped each time, as if, "Get off and I mean it, now!" The squirrel wanted his breakfast and refused to budge, so I opened the door and all fled.

Squirrels run away as little as possible, so the birds stayed away too. Eventually the food was eaten at various times. No matter how much birds and squirrels love free food, they never eat all of it. If a flock comes in - starlings, grackles, sparrows - they take turns and leave. Flocks depend on scouts to see if it is safe, and they follow the lead of the most anxious bird in leaving when anything threatens.

Birds gather to await their next meal. In Phoenix we had permanent resident doves sitting on the pool fence. They had a dove block and daily tosses of sunflower seeds.

In Midland I bought leftover popcorn after a student exhibition - two large garbage bags full. That night inches of snow fell and I had the bird-feed no one wanted a few hours before. (We heard the announcement over the PA system - I alone showed up - "We have leftover popcorn we would like to sell.") Every day I spread popcorn over the snow. Soon a flock of doves remained in the pines. Whenever I stepped outside, they all cooed in pleasure at once. "Breakfast is served!" They also enjoyed a second meal each day.

I noticed in the summer (Midland) that the same area featured constant visits by birds. I set up a compost pile encased in chicken wire. Lots of tasty arthropods and earthworms worked on the finishing product, and birds perched on the wire to pounce on food. In human terms, it was a sushi bar, constantly refilling itself with wiggling high-protein food.

I no longer make compost in wire bins. Instead, mulch made from shredded wood and leaves serves as compost. The birds love to rest above the mulch and pounce on food.  Someone called a mulched garden, "The biggest bird-feeder around." Every living source provides for others. Nothing is wasted, as John 6 revealed when the multitude was fed miraculously.

Many miss the point of divine engineering. The Son of God, the Creating Word (Genesis 1, John 1) fashioned every living thing with a purpose, sometimes with more than one purpose. An earthworm devours bacteria, which digest the food drawn in by the worm. The earthworm's all muscle-body, with bristles attached to each segment, pushes and wiggles its way through soil -

1. Aerating the ground
2. Providing channels for rain
3. Adding usable calcium to improve the root zone
4. Fertilizing with nitrogen compounds
5. Offering itself, unwillingly, as food for many creatures and fishermen
6. Donating eggs for future generations
7. Dying to give a last burst of nitrogen compounds to the garden.

If an earthworm can do so much in its lifetime, how much more has God designed us to do in ours?