I found it funny this morning, while standing over the sink rinsing out my cloth menstrual pad, that if you'd told me 10 years ago I'd be doing that I would have laughed in your face. If you would have said I would be using cloth diapers, cloth pads, line drying my clothes and cooking mostly from scratch I would have thought you were crazy. Funny how things change.

Just made us Cuban dirty rice for lunch. Kids seem to like it. I need to get more daring with my spice usage; I'm afraid of using too much so I usually end up using less than I should have. Need to listen to the spice, BE the spice.

We're learning about Antarctica this week in our ongoing geography quest to make lapbooks of all the seven continents. Did you know that polar bears only live near the North Pole in the Arctic and penguins only live in Antarctica? I'm assuming everyone probably knew this so I'm stupid for not having known it lol! But I love how I learn new things along with the kids. Fantastic.

I've been absent from the online world this last week mainly because I've been reading. A friend cajoled me into reading Fast Food Nation. All I can say is oh...my....god. This book was a very real eye opener for me. Not just about the fast food industry, but about the meat packing industry, family farms, globalization and our society as a whole. It's an amazing book and it's on my "you gotta read this" list. Right alongside Ishmael and Your Money or Your Life. If you haven't read those, GO AND DO IT NOW! Ish and YMOYL totally changed my life. They put me on the path of the aforementioned cloth dipes/pads/conservation/environmental/frugal living stuff. To paraphrase Oprah, I feel I'm coming close to living my authentic life because of those books.

Okay, enough of my ranting for today....mmmm...more dirty rice....