stuff from all over.

so....been a little negligent of the ol blog here.

what's been going on over at the ol house here:

my grandma came and spent last weekend with us. if i hadn't been ill, i'd probably have utilized the time better.

my tincture press came. *squee*

went to bed, bath, and beyond and ordered my kitchenaid mixer. and the grain mill attachment. helpful for making one's own flour, and also for beer brewing.

harvested a crap-ton of tomatoes, more zucchini, more beans. omg heirloom tomato salad. so good.

did some research on benign prostatic hypertrophy and wrote a paper for school. more on that later. learned that hops not only contain phytoestrogens, but also has been shown to produce breast cell changes in those susceptible to female cancers. very interesting. makes me wonder about the overwhelming breast tenderness i experienced during the last few cycles in conparison with the amount of beer i had been drinking. however, no conclusion can be drawn from that, because more late night beer drinking equals more coffee equals i already have fibroadenomas, and that's one of the things you're supposed to stay away from, in the event of fibroadenomas. i've found lately i can't really drink coffee anymore, more than about one cup and i get disoriented and panicky. fair enough. doesn't matter anyway, i can't drink beer on a regular basis, i get pretty bad rebound anxiety from it.

my sister is here, she drove through the torrential rains we had last night to come hang out and eat oreos and pizza and watch back episodes of shin chan and it's always sunny in philadelphia.

speaking of torrential rains, fall out from ike is predicted today, complete with high wind advisory and chance for severe storms and tornadoes. last night while we were at bed bath and beyond, i guess a tornado hit an apartment complex i drive past twice a week on my way out to plymouth. crazy. i'm sitting outside right now, and it's trying to clear up, which is actually not good, because it means more chance of severe weather later. i'm missing an herbwalk today, i'm a little bummed about that, but at some point, it's going to start pouring, it's a long drive to and from, and damn, i'm tired. the spa is actually picking up, so in addition to my 10 hour workday thursday, i went and worked thursday evening at the spa, and all day yesterday.

pressed some tinctures out this morning - cramp bark, wild yam root, licorice root, and calendula. good yields from all - 70-80%. nice.

wes has spent considerable time in the woods lately. my new favorite story is how he got screwed by the michigan mushroom hunter's guild. he went out to proud lake last weekend while the MMHC was having their annual walk there, unbeknownst to him. he would've had an impressive haul, but every clump he came across was picked clean by them. he ran across bears head tooth, chicken mushroom, and some other stuff. he went out in the pouring rain yesterday and had a pretty impressive haul of honey mushrooms, bears head tooth and other hiriceums, and small puff balls. spore prints definitely point to the honey mushrooms not being deadly galerinas, but i'm still suspicious of them. there's a few other look alikes that grow here that are not good edibles. he's going to give them a try later, and if he's not sick and dying for the next few days, well...i guess they're not poisonous. i say feed them to the neighbors. don't know that i'll be eating them, myself.

okay, back to BPH. Benign prostatic hypertrophy occurs often as men age, which is essentially a swelling of the prostate, sometimes cutting off urine flow completely, since the urethra runs through the prostate. I was reading a few articles in addition to my reading for school, and I was struck by the coincidence of the rate of BPH in concordance with a "western" diet. there's a much higher incidence of men with BPH if they're eating the "western" diet, which i take to mean more highly processed. BPH occurs when there are higher levels of estrogens in the body than there are free testosterones, is one of the theories, and the prostate becomes less receptive to DHT, which is a form of testosterone. Westernized diet=more estrogens? Fair enough, especially when you consider a lot of highly processed food contains a lot of highly processed soy. While these men aren't necessarily sitting down and eating a cake of tofu every day, they ARE consuming a crapload of processed soy. I'd read somewhere else (don't quote me on this) that processed soy is more prone to causing cell changes than unprocessed soy, like edamame, or tofu, or even homemade soy milk. Japanese men following a traditional diet with tofu & stuff still have lower levels of BPH than their counterparts eating a westernized diet....processed soy??

anyway, that's all hearsay and conjecture, for certain, but something interesting to think about, and whether it's processed soy or higher levels of garbage in processed foods, it's pretty clear - it's bad for you in more ways than one. apparently that didn't stop me from eating oreos for breakfast. *grin*

we're starting to formulate more of a plan for the mushroom growing stuff. the shed's probably going to be unsuitable, so wes is talking about building another one. he talked to the farmer's market guy about selling mushrooms n stuff there, and the guy was like hell yes! so now wes is trying to talk me into selling teas and tinctures and massages and stuff at the booth. i'm interested, but like everything else, i'm scared. teas would be easy enough, but tinctures? i'd have to look into the legality of that...massages also shouldn't be a problem, but there is an issue with having to be licensed within the city of farmington. i'll have to look into that. then there's also the fact that i don't have an office and don't really want to refer people to the spa all the way up in keego. not to mention, it's freaking EXPENSIVE. good lord. i don't know that i'd ever pay that much for a massage. not that i get most of it, but i get a healthy cut, when compared to how some other places pay their MT's. plus, the table, sheets, oil, music...it's all provided. i've been thinking about leasing some office space in a historic building not far from downtown farmington, but i don't have the extra income to sustain an office without much of a client base. the office space in the building is quite cheap, but i'm pretty sure part of the process of getting licensed in farmington also applies to the space, and i'm also pretty sure that you need to have your own bathroom. i would love to get a couple of other MT's into sharing a space...something i should work on. i don't do chair massage right now, and don't have a chair for chair massage, but that wouldn't be hard to acquire, both in terms of skill and materials.

i have a new client next week with fibromyalgia. i remember very little from school regarding fibromyalgia, so...research time!!