Lavender Love🌸

Hello www world...Amazon Merd 2.0 is here! In the summer of 2014, we took an expedition through the Peruvian Jungle that was the adventure of a lifetime!🙊 I learned a lot about my life and my students and, best of all, I found my happy! Learning, exploring, the outdoors, journaling, sharing - these are a few of my favorite things! Being able to share my experiences with the world and hopefully inspire a few along the way truly makes my heart explode to a grinched sized one, so...I’m back! 

This time, I want to focus on one of my favorite quotes from the Amazon Merd expedition, "I’ve only got one life, I want it to mean something!" (I’ll find a way to work in my Dad’s fav too - "He went from Curious George to Congo in seconds!") 

Over the last five years, there has been a major sign in my life, I'm talking big, flashing, used car dealership sign, pushing me into an environmental hippy. Now I am a HUGE believer in signs - Fools Rush In, pretty much my life minus the baby. I use signs to guide everything else I do - big purchases (I'll tell you the story of my Black Friday Costco TV later), where to live, love, my career - I have no idea why I didn't see this one sooner! My trip to the Amazon and meeting the Shaman, teaching Environmental Biology at MCC, starting the AP Environmental Science program at MP, working summers at ASU in water purification and solar energy, numerous friends having trouble conceiving, unexplainable student behaviors, reports of a spike in gender ambiguity cases from a local pediatric endocrinologist....all of it finally clicked on a hot June afternoon in a lavender field in Salt Lake City...with the help of some pretty inspiring Oil Hive girlies!

We've gone from Organic to high fructose corn syrup, plants to proplyparaben, lemons to Phthalates, and live in a food culture where Whole 30 is a diet and not way of life.

And in the very extreme National Geographic big picture, what if everything is connected? What if this new level of chemical processing affects the developing brain - losing rationale and impulse control - and unspeakable acts are committed? What if a lot of the hate and disability in our processed culture is actually caused by cheap shampoo and fatty fish? Now I'm no Dr. Phil, and I don't pretend to know more than I do (unless it's on the powerpoint👩🏻‍🏫), but...what if?

So, after an amazing weekend at the Young Living Oil Life convention and fresh off a 10 day sugar/dairy/alcohol/caffeine detox courtesy of my girl power gym JABZ🥊, I am over the moon excited to make my life the cleanest, healthiest and happiest ever...after all, it's the only one I’ve got!

   

Thank you for sharing this purification experience with me! Join in as I navigate the long list of foreign words on labels, research what vocab like "natural" or "plant-based" really means, attempt to grow my own 100% organic veggies (starting with bag lima beans of course inspired by my Long Island friends) and pass along hippy-infused tips that will direct you to where the grass is lacking in ironite - so may not be greener, but it is chemical free! I guarantee this blog will cause you to double take👀 the next time you pick up Chlorox, because you know the natural cleaner Thieves exists. Or you'll think about trimming the fat and all of the toxins that travel up the food chain with it off of little Flounder🐠 at your next fish fry. Or wonder about the chemicals in your office bathroom's air freshener (affectionately named "Poop spray"💩 in the MP Science workroom), and switch to a diffuser with maybe...Purification essential oil instead? Whatever you take from this, my hope is that, just like my "hippies in training" (aka high school students), you'll get a chance to see the world through John Lennon rose-colored sunglasses and make decisions that are best for you and your fam bam!

                                                       

So, my trashcan🗑 is full of chemical-based products, the diffuser is lavender🌸 locked and loaded, and I've got enough plant-based food🌱 to feed a Stegosaurus! Next stop - the produce section of Whole Foods - well pending that RedforEd teacher raise of course! Tune in for my flower child transformation, one tiny Bohemian lifestyle swap at a time!✌🏻