A lot about very little

Color me unsurprised. A new survey of Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths.

Another non-shocker that I discovered while researching the possibility of opening an Etsy shop for selling bloomers: Most people have no idea how to correctly wear a garter belt for daily wear. Ladies (and gentlemen): Your panties go on over the garter belt*. This way you don't have to adjust your stockings every time you visit the toilet. Ah! Suddenly the world makes a little more sense, doesn't it? Garter belts and stockings are a thing of beauty and practicality. Now you know why I wear pantyhose only under the most extreme circumstances.

I had a dream this morning that I was a terminally ill child (male) in a cartoonish futuristic world. The people were real-looking, but the environment was a combination of hand-drawn and computer-animation. I was a tiny, bald, pale thing and my mother was a short, plump black woman with giant eyes and amazing hair. She had a disease that made her get younger (like the daughter in Hyperion) but she was on drugs that kept her at a stable age (about mid-twenties). I was being removed from the treatment facility where I lived, but I could take all my medications with me if I hurried (I wasn't supposed to do so, but I had time and the opportunity). I scooped them all into giant glass jars and cups and carried them out to our van. The pills looked like black, gray, and white candies. Some of them were shaped liked sticks of gum. I gave one of the gum-shaped ones to a man who had been nice to me while I was in the facility to use for his own research. It was a drug that kept you from aging while you were ill, so your disease wouldn't progress until a cure was found.

I wish I remembered my dreams more often. I've tried every trick in the book. My problem is when I wake, I wake up completely and immediately. Like a light switch. I rarely have any recollection of even being asleep, much less in a dream.

Update: For those of you who don't already read Stuology's blog, please consider at least reading today's post. She's such a great person, and an amazing mother.

Food observations, one month post-Whole30:

I ate two apples yesterday (both very small, one before dance class, one after). No nausea, but I'm super bloated today and uncomfortable. I think no more bags of apples, no matter how delightful and locally-grown.

I enjoy coconut milk in my coffee as much as I did cow cream.

I didn't have a single food craving during my period**, despite spending time this week browsing recipe possibilities on TasteSpotting (warning: pastry trigger-alert!).

Once KCRF is over, I'm going to re-incorporate dairy in the form of kefir at breakfast and yogurt in my cooking. Time to repopulate that gut flora! Yes, I know cooking kills the bacteria, but I had to include the link for that chicken recipe because it looks amazing.



* Let us not even speak of the people who wear their garters, just dangling, on the outside with no stockings attached. *ugh*!

**My third period since the August Whole30.