The Whole Shibang

My company has several nurses that work solely for us as consultants. Today in training one came in and gave a presentation on the many complications that can accompany pregnancy, to give us a good idea of what to expect (no pun intended) and how to code certain items in our system. The entire presentation made me uneasy and continually angry. Not necessarily at any one person or entity; more at the situation we as Americans find ourselves in.
The last century saw an economic boom with the advent of modern agriculture and mass amounts of available food. This in turn was the red carpet that our modern era of convenience to strolled in on. With food so readily available, Americans could focus on more important things, like being entertained and buying their kids toys. Technology and science has become the American idol, prized higher than any other thing in the world. However, in our greatly advanced society, we have the highest infant/mother birth mortality rate of all industrialized nations. We have more disease, cancer, and syndromes than ever before. Some are new to the last century.
Sure, there are more people in the world (I think we're nearing 9 billion now, if memory serves), which in turn allows for more possibilities with sickness statistically. I get that. But it's not enough to account for what we have seen as far as ratios go.
Before the 20th century, heart disease was very rare. People on average consumed 18 lbs. of butter a year, as well as large quantities of animal fats and oils, rich with cholesterol and saturated fat. The milk they drank was raw. The eggs they cooked were from free range chickens. Not because they were all hippies; they just didn't have the technology we do today. Lucky them. I'll say it again in case you missed it: Before the 20th century, heart disease was very rare.
Now, before you go calling me a hypocrite for hating technology as I write this on my iBook using my Time Warner Cable listening to My Morning Jacket on iTunes, let me explain that I think technology is a very cool thing. It's made life easier in a lot of ways that it didn't have to be. The dude pushing his rock along road thinks about a wagon; hey, now he can tote that rock wherever the eff he wants to! This thing is useful! Technology is a very good thing. I love me some good technology. But it shouldn't be the end all. It might be time to realize that maybe, just maybe, our great-grandparents didn't have it all wrong. Whatever happened to respecting the elders, and gray hair being a crown of wisdom? For example, maybe we should keep washing our hands to prevent the bubonic plague (which, btw, is quite curable these days), but maybe we shouldn't create a vaccine for every minute little bug that comes along, because it's not good for our kids to become autistic or to create superbugs that are immune to everything we throw at them. Maybe planes are really good for transporting people and things, but maybe we shouldn't be flying asparagus from Chile so we can eat it in the winter. Maybe we should eat locally and seasonally because that's the way our bodies have evolved.

I know a lot of people think we're crazy for the way we (us here Deulens) choose to live our lives. Or at least they will the longer they get to know us. We still sleep with Ada (now 1); we haven't yet given her any sugar or refined flour yet (or hopefully ever; hah!) because we believe it's the root of all processed evil in this world. We drink raw milk and cheese (and would buy raw butter if it was available) and cook with lard. We have 5 baby chickens in our living room. I'm converting my truck to run on veggie oil (see, technology! I feel like Bill Nye). We only flush the toilet when it really needs to be flushed. I believe riding my bike to work is a better option than riding a bike that doesn't go anywhere. I don't watch t.v. Not really anyway. I've never paid for cable or directv (mostly because we're too busy baking bread or rock climbing; let me rephrase that: Julie bakes bread and I rock climb). We listen to bands called Man Man and Trampled By Turtles because we believe the musicians who aren't paid vast amounts of money make better music. We tried for a home water birth because we don't believe that birth is something that should be controlled, but, instead, is something that you should experience and allow to happen as naturally as possible.

So, as I sat there listening to home-girl rattle on about the complications of pregnancy, without so much as a hint that any of the c-sections or cerclages could be due to our blind following of the infallible science of mankind (or America, rather; or insurance, rather; or the insatiable desire for control, rather), or the drastic change our diet has taken over the last 100 years as a result of "policies" and propaganda (read: mind control/brainwashing of sorts; see "advertising" in wikipedia), I couldn't help but be a little frustrated at the situation. Yet here I am, processing claims for people who don't know any better because this is our life, here in the good ol' US of A. This is how we do it baby. Uh-huh. Ignorance is bliss. Drugs are the answer. Oh, but only the kind that our "govern"ment approves.

Do people know a lot of this information? Yes. Do they change their lives at all? Maybe a little. Most don't do too much, since that demon-apathy, is hearty and convincing. And also because it's nearly impossible to mimic dietary habits of people who lives 100 years ago. We all die anyway, right? Well, I for one won't go quietly into that good night. Maybe just sadly.
Cheers.

Blog Blog Blog

For those avid readers of my blog, I apologize for my tardiness as of late. I know a lot of you have been emailing me and asking for intricate details of all the goings on in Deulen-land (currently the Northeast). Well, your wait is up. Now--what? Yes, of course people email me. Who? Lot's of inquiring minds. Now, as I was saying--What? No, I'm not going to give you names...I don't care if you don't believe me...No, I'm not embarrassed by the size. It's a fair size. Some would even say sizable...Ok fine! Scott Riley asked, alright! Scott Riley!...No, he's not the only one...His mother asked too. No, she didn't write; why does that matter?! She asked through him in the email...Yes, I do think that counts as two! Alright, you know what, I'm just gonna write the blog and when thousands of people start writing me, I'm not gonna even remember your name, so there! Huh? What do you think about that??? Nice. Real nice. Of course I know your name. What a stupid question. Alright, this conversation is over.

As I was saying, a lot has happened. We've been here for nearly 3 months. I've been doing minor repairs on the truck here and there. It's nearly veggie worthy. Speaking of veggie, I noticed that I was missing something vital to convert my truck to run on waste vegetable oil, namely the kit I ordered 8 weeks ago and dropped nearly 3 grand on. After politely complaining to the company, Frybrid, about their lack of communication with me on the kit being almost 4 weeks late, and not offering a discount, they promptly finished it up and put it in the mail. According to FedEx, it's currently en route from the other Portland. I should have it on the truck by the end of June. I'll try to post pictures if I remember.

In other news, Ada celebrated her first birthday last Tuesday. We decided she doesn't really like to be dirty.
"Guys, come on. Spoon first please?"

A new polka dot hat!

A new dress!

Never has a child been so enthralled with baby accoutrement. Maybe it was the yellow packaging.

Also, we're on Skype with a web cam now, so you if you would like to see Ada snap her fingers, pee in a bowl, say any one of the dozens of words she now knows, or look at my ugly mug, give us a ring. Our email is thedeulens@gmail.com.

Ok, moving on. Not sure if I said it last time or not, but I'm no longer working for DirecTV. Further proof to me that there is a God. I am now working for Unum. I know I probably would have kicked my ass years ago for saying this, but this corporation is pretty cool. They actually care about people. One of the few to use common sense, if you ask me. I am currently in training as an (get ready) Associate Short Term Disability Benefits Specialist Trainee. They have a kettlebell program, need I say more?
Next, I've been climbing a lot lately. I guess that's not really anything new. However, so far, I've been to Rumney, Cathedral Ledge, Pawtuckaway, Shagg Crag, and, last weekend, Sundown Ledge. They call their crags "ledges" in New Hampshire. I'm getting ready to send 5.13c this weekend, for anyone that cares. It will be my second at the grade. I ordered a hangboard online per Julie's request, and we're going to start doing workouts once a week on it. Presumably she'll start climbing soon, but I'm not even sure if she knows when this will be, much like the 2nd coming. Not really. Here's a guy falling on a route I climbed this past weekend (Memorial Day weekend, 2009) :


Now, what do lasagna and gardening have in common? Not much you say? Ha! Shows how perm you are (wikipedia permaculture if you're not in the know). You take a piece of grass, cut it out, flip it over, scatter kitchen scraps on it, cover that with newspaper, cover that with compost, then hay, then leaves, then more compost. Viola, you have a ready-to-plant garden. Here's proof that we actually did it:






So, we might have a bit of garden goods this season after all.

Piggy backing on that topic, we've been preparing here and there for getting chickens. South Portland recently passed a law allowing up to 6 chickens on a person's property. We had 5 baby chicks delivered today from Connecticut. We also built that shed back up which we deconstructed from next door.














Jeff (Julie and Sarah's younger brother) has been doing most of the work of late, making sure it's structurally sound and waterproof, etc. It's starting to look pretty good. Right now, the chicks (Australorps) are in a rubbermaid tub with food, water, a heating lamp, and hay for bedding. They are almost as cute as kittens and they squeak a lot.






























So there you have it. That ought to keep all you avid readers at bay, for now. Scott Riley, I hope you're reading this. You never do write back anymore. How's your mother anyway...

A Man's Man Weekend

I just have to spout a little about the goings-on in my arena of late. Last weekend was about as cool as they get as far as being me goes. First of all, I went climbing outside Saturday at this cool little sport wall called the Shagg Crag. I can't tell you how excited I was to actually be outside on the 2nd day of Spring. Maine is going to be a good place, methinks. Not as good as Colorado, but sure as hell better than Duluth! (Though Duluth definitely had it's pluses). The Shagg Crag has an overhanging granite wall (the only of its kind on the east coast I'm told by the locals, though I guess I'm a local too now). It was definitely worth the 1.5 hours of driving and .5 hours hiking to get there, as I had a pretty good day, on-sighting 5.12a,b, and c, and 1 hanging a 5.12d at the e.o.d. That's me in the red sports bra. Beautiful climbing for sure.

Next day, my bro-in-law, (heretofore referred to as "Jeff"), Matt and I got to work on fixing my truck. The past few weeks, every time I've gone above 40 mph and hit a bump of any kind, the front tires would begin to wobble back and forth, seemingly uncontrollably. Since this would rattle the entire truck, specifically the cab, to the point where it felt like the whole engine might explode, I had to bring a new pair of shorts every time I wanted to go on the freeway. This was good for no one. After googling "truck wobble," the only thing that came up was "death wobble." The name seemed fitting. I discovered that my truck (97 Dodge Ram) didn't have a very good track bar fitting, and would become loose over years, causing steering problems and sometimes, yes, you guessed it, a death wobble. Duh, the track bar. I should've known right? (Yes, that is sarcasm). It also always pulled to the right a bit. I found an after market kit called a Luke's Link that I ordered from Colorado and decided to put on myself to make it "better than new" (according to the website). After buying a bunch of new tools to be able to accomplish said project, making multiple trips to Napa and True Value Hardware, and pulling on a rusted bolt so hard I thought I would explode, we finally got the track bar off and fitted with the link (I won't disclose how many hours/days this took). I also fixed the airbag light that wouldn't go off, and Jeff put on a new horn. Driving on the freeway at 60, hitting a bump, and not feeling so much as a burp from Sampson (our truck), was pretty damn satisfying.

After that (Sunday being the culmination of the hours/days of work on the truck), Matt, Jeff and I brewed up a Marzen lager, Marzen being German for "March." It took about 5 hours, since we did a partial mash, but it is now fermenting in our basement. Since it's a lager, it will take about 2 months to finish. We will wait till the end of the week, and then transfer it to a secondary fermenter. Another week or 2, and then we'll bottle it, mixing it with local organic maple syrup as a bottling sugar. When I found out that Budweiser uses rice as their grain, I was thoroughly disgusted. The bastardization of fine arts in this country has no end. The greed of it all makes me sad. I bet back in the day Bud was a good beer, and that Mr. Weiser was a good dude who loved making beer and not vast amounts of money. Then the corporatocracy took over somewhere in there. Blah. Anyway, the brew shop in Portland is pretty cool. The guy helped us modify our recipe to accommodate our brewing tools as well as selling us the closest thing he had for hops and Irish moss to what we needed. We're going to call it Ahorn Marzen (Ahorn being German for Maple). I'm excited for this beer, since it's the first one I've brewed where we came up with the recipe on our own. It will essentially be our own beer, and not some kit that random dude at beer company threw together for noobs to brewing. Equally satisfying as the truck and climbing.

So like I say, it was a man's man weekend. And I listened to Man Man too.

Changing

Blogs: Never has so little been said with so many words by so many people.

My aim in writing this blog (in general) is to give insight into my and my family's life, our thoughts, and the changes therein. My hope is that I don't bore you to death with mindless details that only the most wealthy of people can relate to (or actually want to?). While we may not be wealthy by any stretch of the imagination compared to a good many of our peers, we are still well above the majority of the world. I understand that this could be largely subjective, so feel free to skip ahead if at any point you begin wondering what's for dinner or when you last changed your underwear.

Our plans for life failed; to some extent anyhow. (Flashback: We wanted to start a farm in Thailand. To do so, we needed money. To get money we were going to teach English in S. Korea, where, supposedly, gratuitous amounts of it are easily within reach for the ready and willing. To learn to farm, we went to Hawai'i to learn about said endeavor in a tropical environment. This first step, had a large kink thrown into it, which we later named "Ada," (Julie says this is largely my fault, though I'm still not too sure that a woman gets pregnant when the man does the taxes; that just doesn't make any sense).


Do not be fooled by her quick wit and charms. She will completely change your life in ways you never dreamed imaginable. Mostly because you won't be dreaming very much. Or doing much of anything except trying to remember what life was like before her.
Running out of money quickly, we decided on Duluth, MN, where some good friends were also with child. (Yes, I know that was an insane decision, thanks.) We regrouped, assessed our sitch, and decided some cheap land in the good ol' US of A would be a more viable option. West coast looked enticing, but from everything we saw, acres were pretty expensive. Other states that were desirable for farming and awesomeness faired about the same. However, Maine kept coming under the radar for one reason or another. Mostly because of cheap land and the fact that Julie's brother-in-law, Matt (a respectable and talented massage therapist who dabbles in music and being totally sweet) is from Boston and has a good variety of family, friends, and connections to the Irish mafia.
We began making plans. Big plans. Dodge Ram 2500 diesel extra cab long bed w/ a topper plans, thanks to Amtrak (for those of you that are unfamiliar with our relationship with the transportation entity, we were in a train wreck on November 30th, 2007 in Chicago; engine engine number 9, riding the Chicago line, if I get into a wreck, do I get a brand new truck?).



= Big Money!!! Ha ha! No, not really. Actually, just enough for a 12 y.o. truck with 250K miles on it, pay off all of Julie's c-section and other various birthing and medical bills, and enough to get us to Maine and live for a month or so. That, and a nice stimulus check will help us to convert the truck to run on veggie oil and put Julie in holistic school (there's a very good 2 year accredited on-line school we're sniffing).
So, here we are. The drive was pretty uneventful. It cost about $30 in toll fees. The truck currently gets about 15-17 mpg. It has some rust and other work I need to do on it. But after watching Chris Harkness tear apart his 89' Toyota pick-up and replace the head gasket, without ever having attempted such an endeavor before, I'm pretty inspired to d.i.y.(m.) on just about anything now.
Duluth wasn't terrible. Towards the end, I realized that we really had no business living there. We hate the cold (as in -20 often), we have no family there (and though we made some good friends, that wasn't really enough of a reason to stay), we didn't really feel like we fit in with the culture very well, we don't like winter sports terribly, the rock climbing was very limited (though I helped make a dent with some locals in establishing a new bouldering area ), and our overall experience was much different that what we had expected. I suppose most things are in the end. Land was cheap there, but the growing season is very short.

I guess I should address the whole farming thing. Seriously? Like moving to Iowa and growing corn? Big tractors, grain silos, and miles of blank flat land? Well, no. Not at all in fact. Our desire for said endeavor stemmed from a mild interest in the food we were eating and a few random ailments that had been bothering Julie. One book lead to another, our eyes were slowly pried open, and before we realized it, we were switching all our food to organic and learning the great importance of raising food right. What this means exactly, is obviously subject to much debate. Amidst cries of "You can't feed the world like that!" and "What kind of tomato doesn't matter!" we have come to firmly believe that this world is involved in a serious food crisis that only a minority of people see in our society. Sickness, disease, and pharmaceutical companies are at all time highs in this country. Diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, and a whole slew of other new and old ailments are prevalent in our society. Yet our science, technology, and drug research are more advanced than humankind has ever known. Why can't we cure anything? Why are people still getting sick? Why is cancer expected at the end of life? After doing research on Weston A. Price's nutritional treatise, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, and reading a whole slew of other books and documentaries, (Omnivore's Dilemma, King Corn, Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About, Nourishing Traditions, Fatal Harvest, Wild Fermentation, Permaculture: A Designer's Guide, etc) we have been thoroughly subjected to enough facts to desire drastic change in our lives. For instance, we believe that conventional farming, should it continue, will eventually lead to the downfall of our society. Among other reasons, this will happen through the depletion of the soil which will lead to the continued lack of vital nutrients in our food (hence all the disease (that and the ubiquitous sedentary lifestyle)) as well as creating deserts out of once farmable land. I predict a revolution of some kind when people can no longer afford anything other than highly processed food where the majority is comprised of some form of corn (oh wait, that's already happened). That or everyone will be so sick that the only people left alive, and are well enough to function in a normal manner, will be those who eat a traditional diet and regularly exercise. A hamburger should not cost 1$. It just shouldn't. And a farmer should be able to make a real living from the things he/she grows, not just scrape by on small government subsidies. There is enough info on that for a separate blog, therefore, I digress. For the mean time, if you want to learn more about what kind of farming we'll be doing, look up "permaculuture."

So we're in Portland. It's a lot warmer than Duluth. People here are amazing. The climbing is amazing. The city is amazing. Our house is incredible; a colonial style with 5 bedrooms, 2 baths, a sweet porch, full basement, in the heart of South Portland, and a mere 10 minute bike ride from downtown. Living here just seems right for some reason. Everything has fit into place in coming, and things only seem to look up for us. Which is good. Really good. The only downside is that I need a job. Quick. And it has to pay well, cause the Whole Foods here is ridiculously overpriced (or maybe I'm used to paying less than I should for food?). At any rate, eating healthily is expensive. When Julie and I both worked in Denver, we spent roughly $500-600 a month on food. I suspect our bills here will be greater than that. I know we can garden a bit, and grow food inside our house, but our future farm is really more the venue for becoming independent in that sense.
So I need a job. I'm a bit terrified of going back to work in an office. The thought of sitting in front of a screen doing work for a corporate giant makes me shutter. I know I can write. I just don't know how to get paid for it. I think one has to write a lot. And I don't. Except for emails, which I'm really good at. But I don't think you can really get paid for those. Also, I don't have enough time to just "write." You know, like short stories, long stories, articles, and the like. Mostly because I'm too busy working another job or looking for another job. What I really want to do for a career is work with wind and solar power in some capacity.

On to less boring topics: Ada. She's pretty rad. Today, while I was holding her and cooking, I pointed at the pan and said, "Hot." She repeated it perfectly. I pointed at the Tabasco Sauce and repeated the word, as did she. She did it a third time when I pointed to the steam coming from a pot. Astounding. To me anyway. Later, Julie got her to say, "Up," which she has been doing repeatedly (though not without some minor coaxing). She has also crawled up the stairs at least 10 times now, without falling (don't worry, I spot her), and today, we believe she had her first real food craving, as she began picking at and devouring aunt Sarah's potatoes in her Amy's Southwestern soup. About 20 people commented on how "cute" she was today in the supermarket. I think we might have to see about getting her an agent...

--Chris