Return of The Mom

Just got in from a 5 day vacation in Houston. It felt like I was there for 2 days. We did a lot, but also, I rested a lot. I guess that’s ok. It was my vacation, but I also sense that lower elevation has a depressive effect on my body. The air is heavier there than up home in Utah where the lowest part of the valley is a mile above sea level. I am used to air that’s thinner, and I may get some kind of reverse altitude sickness whenever we go to Texas. It’s hard to say. There’s not much study of the subject in medical literature.

The second thing that usually gets me is the amount of artificial fragrance in the house we stay at. Every outlet has a Glade plug-in inserted. I had the sense this visit, to remove the plug ins from the room and bathroom I was in and store them in the cupboard under the bathroom sink. I thought at least that would be a little less exposure at night. I also tried to get out of the house and walk around as much as possible.

Why am I rattling on about this?

I think people should know there is a cost to being bombarded with artificial fragrances. Everyone jokes about the women who hock oils and their pyramid schemes, but no one talks about the people who go crazy for Febreze, Glade plug ins and those who still douse themselves in perfumes and artificially scented deodorants, hair sprays and fabric softeners. It’s like there’s a concerted effort in the world to turn against everything that’s healthy, and I’m nearly sick of it. No, you’re sick from it. I’m just disgusted.

After I dropped the plug-ins from my room and bathroom under the sink, it took about a half a day for the perfume in the room to die down before I did start feeling better when I slept. I didn’t wake up feeling like the bed was a black hole that was sucking me into it and that I’d never get out of it. That is my honest to goodness usual experience of sleeping in Texas. I sleep all day, go back for naps and sleep more. When I try to get up it’s like fighting gravity to get out of bed. Seriously, it’s like an invisible elephant is sitting on top of me and squishing my body into the bed, and I wake up in a daze no matter how long I’ve slept feeling like I desperately require more sleep. I always feel like there’s something terribly wrong with me. When I am up, I find myself craving carbs and sugar just to keep moving. It’s just really strange for me how spacey I feel. I can’t think there. This is not to say I didn’t have a marvelous time. This is just something that takes place in the background of my physical and mental space while I am there.

So, consider, if you haven’t, that like most things we make fun of “crunchy” people, “granola” people, “antivaxxers”, vitamin people, vision board people or whatever is healthy and wholesome that gets turned into a joke, that the essential oil people might also be onto something good.

I brought about 6 different oils with me to use while we were in Houston. They were mostly for my face. I had this red spot on my cheek for the past couple years. It wasn’t getting worse, but not better, either. It’s not like my one brownish age spot. It had more of a white ring around it after I washed my face. It’s like the white ring around a red mark if you got slapped. It was also dry and flaky looking, and I was concerned it might be cancer. I started treating it with various oils that have been tested to have anti-carcinogenic properties. Also, using concentrated vitamin C and apple cider vinegar. It scabbed up a bit about a week prior to going to Houston. Now, I am using just the oils that heal (and have been shown to correlate with reduced tumors in mice in studies) to treat it more gently. I’m pleased to report the spot is quickly healing up.

Long story, I brought some of those oils with me to Houston. I also brought an oil for immunity. There were a couple days I woke up feeling that tell tale scratch in the back of my throat and sinus. Some of you may know that the kids and I are sensitive to environmental pollutants. We were sick for the entirety of two years we lived under that oil refinery in Bountiful. So, staying in a house where we were bombarded with artificial fragrances and eating vacation food (not to mention vacation drinking)… well, it could have gone sideways. I put the immunity oil in my water. I take oil capsules made by the same company (who shall not be named that I buy my oils from) that help with digestion. Long story longer, the signs went away, and I didn’t get sick.

None of this is to complain. It’s just to point out that for me, oils are tools that support my health. Like some people have an array of tools. We eat clean foods, we are starting to use flower essences more, homeopathic remedies more, oils more, herbal tinctures, raw herbs, SSKI, being disciplined about my preparedness and we get our bodies moving more. These are things we do in addition to improving our self talk. Many of you watched my conversation with Greg Papanicolas last week about programming your mind for health. Greg is a fitness coach, but he’s more than that. He realizes well being is something that has to be tackled from many directions. Check out that episode if you haven’t seen it, yet. I really focused on gratitude self-talk on our vacation to shift my thinking and ultimately my experience.

There was so much to be grateful for. Aaron and I had the pool all to ourselves one afternoon. We went on a date to the mall. I got a couple of discount tops. He picked up some Levis. We saw the funniest comic ever. Don McMillan is an engineer and a self proclaimed nerd (not a geek or a dork, he has a Venn diagram to help clarify this point) who does his entire sketch in Powerpoint while wearing cargo pants. He’s from America’s Got Talent and was also made famous on Dry Bar Comedy channel on Youtube. You have to check him out. We were practically spitting our drinks out our noses at The Improv in Houston.

We also had a bunch of fun activities with the kids. We enjoyed a pool day with the kids. They saw a movie with their grandma. She rented another at home for them. We went out to eat Mexican food a couple times which was a real treat as we haven’t found decent Mexican food place since we moved out of Salt Lake County. We drove around in new BMW’s the whole week. The boys even took a spin in a 2022 Ferrari!

Last, we had incredible seats at a Houston Astros game versus Texas Rangers, and we were treated to the whole Houston Astros wardrobe prior to seeing the game. I thought it was silly to get all matching Astros clothes for the game until I got there. I have never been to a game where there was more team spirit than going to a baseball game in Texas. No one showed up without team colors on. The kids did the wave for the first time. It went around the stadium like 5 times. After that, they kept asking me when we were going to do a wave again. They got their pictures taken with the Astros cheerleaders and a cow from Chick Fil A who gave them little stuffed cow souvenirs. Now, they love baseball. We danced at half time to Deep In The Heart of Texas. The kids had the best night of their entire lives.

The house we stayed in was a mansion. The in-laws paid for our entire vacation top to bottom. I feel extremely grateful. I have loads to be grateful for.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, a couple of the boys’ cousins drove down together from Dallas (about 4 hours’ drive) to have brunch with us Saturday which was so nice!

All in all, we did many of the healthy things. As you can see, I took loads of photos. There was no shortage of wonderful experiences on this trip.

The main point of all this being, we got to enjoy our vacation despite stuff that normally makes us sick (and not be sick the whole time) because we used our tools that help us with our environmental sensitivities to stay healthy.

You can always drop me a line if you want to learn more about oils and how to start getting some of that infusion of well being in your life at my personal email TheKarenKeener@gmail.com. I’ll message you back as soon as I get it.

More importantly, if you’ve missed any of my Well Being Wednesday programs, go back through them. There are experts on each show that I rely on for so many of our family’s well being maintenance rituals. This program is a free resource to find out about the various tools we use and why. Then, reach out to those people I interview with questions. All the links are provided with the shows to learn more, to dive deeper and to have your life enriched as ours have been.

Be on the lookout for this Wednesday’s guest, the beloved professor, Barbra French will join me to talk about the healthy impacts of the creative process, getting in the flow of creativity and employing creativity in problem solving. It’s a mini masterclass on creativity for well being that you will not want to miss!