Body, be my friend...please...

"Okay, Kathryn. That is it. No more eating crap. It's time to commit to a diet of mostly celery. And you will love it. Or else."

I don't know how many times I have said that to myself. Maybe not word for word. I probably substituted kale for celery sometimes. The point is: harsh restriction. No more fun. Ever. Rabbit diet.

Pretty much every January, me and I have a chat about this. And then every Monday from then on. All year. I have even written up a pledge to my new diet and signed it. I thought about signing it in blood once, but I figured that would be going too far. Plus, I am sure it still wouldn't have worked.

Its amazing the crazy-intense pep talks and preparations we conjure up in an attempt to insure that we will stick to our goals THIS time, just to get to the end of that very same day and wolf down a half dozen Krispy Kremes with little more than a whispered, "I PROMISE I will start tomorrow" to ourselves.

What have I learned from these countless attempts to finally "eat healthy?" Will power is NOT enough. And the more we bully ourselves, the harder it gets. So what the heck do we do?!

When we are trying to stop over-eating, stop eating crap, or stick to an exercise regime, we begin to see our bodies as the ultimate enemy. It's truly an exhausting battle. And how sad to hate a part of ourselves with such venom!

I have learned that if we are to be successful at any kind of self-change, we have got to be MORE kind and understanding to ourselves, not less. Stop telling yourself that you are some kind of strange creature for loving Ben and Jerry more than your husband (of course this is not true, but when we are in the grip of cravings, it sure seems that way). You have to know WHY you love sugar and carbs. They cause an elevated level of serotonin, the brain chemical responsible for making us feel happy and content. Stop punishing yourself for wanting to feel good. Once we accept ourselves, it is much easier to make a change. Its the same at work. We work harder for a boss who respects us.

I have learned that our bodies are truly our best friends when it comes to making a healthy change. We just have to understand how they work. We have to understand what our intense cravings mean, how we misread them, and how to deliver exactly what our bodies need instead. When we work with our body's natural processes and needs, we can achieve balanced, beautiful health. With that comes weight loss, balanced moods, more energy, and especially peace with ourselves and with food.

I have stubbed my toe on the tip of the ice berg of the importance of insulin and blood sugar (bad metaphor, perhaps. What am I doing in iceberg frequented waters, and why am I swimming feet first? Lets just go with it for now...). I have learned that when I eat a meal devoid of protein and healthy fats (like my go-to green smoothie I used to drink for breakfast every morning. I will post about it and put a link here later), my blood sugar spikes and then falls and I feel like crap. Beneath the crappy feeling, my body is desperately trying to regulate the amount of sugar in my blood. It pumps out insulin. Insulin signals my body to store the excess glucose in my blood as fat. The high level of insulin in my blood also signals my body that it has LOW blood sugar, so within a couple of hours, I get insane cravings for sugar and carbs. And the cycle continues.

Recently I read a book entitled "Potatoes, Not Prozac." I didn't even finish it. I read like one chapter. I have not done my homework on this book, but the basic premise rang so true to me that I immediately made a change in my diet. The book basically preaches the importance of protein/carbohydrate pairing to regulate the absorption of sugar into the blood-stream. I started adding protein to every meal, especially to my breakfast and it was amazing how much more stable I felt. And full. I could go hours without cravings.

I have also learned that I am gluten intolerant, as are many, many Americans, they just don't know it. I could go into depth about why (GMO wheat, run-away leaky guts, etc), but that will have to be for another post. Gluten intolerance has been linked to depression, so I have a special interest in this. Up to now, I couldn't have contemplated a world without wheat, but its amazing how motivating information can be. I also find that when I avoid processed foods, gluten kind of just eliminates itself from my diet anyway.

So! I am going to jump into a new diet experiment with both feet starting NOW. I had to get past the holidays, for there was no hope for avoiding sugar during the season and of joy and fudge.

For several years, I have been slowly cutting out sugar and refined and processed foods from my life. However, I still give in and indulge in mounds of crap when I have a bad day, go out with friends, or just feel like treating myself. My favorite "crap foods" are El Monterey Taquitos (I hate a whole bag after a break-up once... that is like 2000 calories, folks. Don't judge.), The Pizza Factory breadsticks, and Breyer's Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream. I just wanted to list those here so that you can refer back to it when you are reading my other posts in the future where I am praising kale and crap and you can remember that I am a normal person...

My plan is to eliminate sugar and gluten. Its not quite that simple, but if I fail at all the other components, I WILL stick with those ones at least.

I will detail my whole diet plan in a new post because this one got ridiculously long about 500 words ago.

Hello Bauman College!

I have officially enrolled in the Nutrition Consultant program at Bauman College of Holistic Nutrition and Culinary Arts! Eighteen months from now, I will be a Certified Nutrition Consultant, ready to change the world one sickie at a time...

My aim in completing this program is two-fold, really.

I have a very vested personal interest in solving my own health puzzle. I have been plagued by depression/anxiety since I was about 16 years old, maybe longer. Like anyone I have talked to who has been "diagnosed" with "depression," my case is just like everyone else's in some ways and like NO ONE else's in others.

Its more like a many headed emotional monster that takes the form of depression, despair, uncontrollable anger, feelings of worthlessness, clumsiness, iritibility, extreme anxiety, and scary apathy. All of these rear their ugly heads randomly, for no apparent reason, for minutes or days at a time, and with an intensity and "out-of-body" quality that sometimes scares me to death.

I don't know how many times I have thought to myself, "This is just not me!" There has to be more to life than talking myself out of senseless emotional states.

I have tried pretty much everything without complete success - therapy, anti-depressant medications, chinese/homeopathic medicine, supplements, more therapy, more anti-depressant medications, and the list goes on. I have had some good years where things balanced out a bit with medications, but they inevitably lose their effectiveness, and I have noticed a scary side effect of increasingly bad memory and concentration issues.

There HAS to be another way. I refuse to believe that my body and/or brain are simply broken and that I need to take drugs to balance my brain chemicals for the rest of my life. I firmly believe that our bodies are the solution to almost all of our physical ills, fully capable of healing themselves when given the proper tools. All of my study and pondering has led me to conclude that diet and nutrition are a perhaps the primary tools, closely followed by exercise.

I want to become an expert at wielding these tools on my own behalf to heal my brain and acheive that optimal, vibrant, joyful health that I beleive we are capable of as human beings.

My second aim is to help other people desperate to reclaim their health to tap into their body's potential to heal.

My research of a dozen nutrition programs led me to Bauman College. I wanted a school that delved into the very essence of holistic health without becoming too extreme. I don't believe in any diet that eliminates any one macronutrient (such as carbohydrates - Paleo/Primal) or a diet that requires a great deal of supplementation and strict adherence to get a balance of nutrients (such as raw/vegan). Having said this, my view is only based on my own study and gut feelings thus far. My experience with all aspects of life is that truth is simple. If it's getting complex, you are probably looking beyond the mark. Still, I want to go into this program as open-minded as possible so as to not get in my own way while I learn.

Bauman's philosophy as stated on their website is this:

"Eating for Health principles are based on the knowledge that our cellular health is determined by the food we eat. Damaged foods damage our cells. Fresh, healthy food sends the right messages to our DNA, encouraging healthy gene expression, as well as efficient growth and repair, a process we call healing. The tragedy of losing one's health can be traced, in large part, to a history of poor-quality food, insufficient nutrients, and exposure to dietary and environmental toxins.

The healthiest diet will come from foods that are fresh, local, seasonal, and organic. When possible, they are diverse and suited to one's individual tastes, temperaments, needs, access to ingredients, and metabolic tendencies. One of the great strengths of the Eating For Health™ system is that it can be vegan or omnivorous, raw or cooked, and it can and naturally will evolve over time and with changing circumstances."

One of the things I like about this approach is that it is not a one-size-fits-all mentality. I think that part of finding our own optimal health comes from listening to our own body. I have found that I am VERY sensitive to sugar, maybe more than most people. My blood sugar levels rise very easily. I am learning to create balance with adding more protein and healthy fats and cutting out refined sugars and flours.

Some people don't react well to meat. Though I resisted it for a long time based on The China Study, I have learned that I simply feel better when my diet includes clean meats and animal products. Not sure why yet!

My hope and desire as I begin my schooling and share what I am learning here, is that it will help others on their own path of personal health.

I encourage your questions and comments to help me deepen my study! I will be sharing both what I am learning in school and the results of my own health transformation.

Raw Brownies

As promised, here is my raw brownie recipe. I don't have a decent picture of them, so I will add that to the post later...

These are seriously addicting. And they are HEALTHY. The first time I had them, I had phantom guilt pains because they tasted so good that they had to be bad for me right? Nope.

Raw Brownies

1 cup walnuts
1 cup dates (pitted)
1/4 cup raw cocoa powder (raw is always better, but regular cocoa powder is just fine)

(Already you are probably thinking that they sound disgustingly healthy, right? False. My normal friends love them, too.)

Combine nuts and dates in food processor and process until very well blended. You should be able to mold a bit of the mixture into a ball without it crumbling. Sometimes you may need to add more dates, but the more you mix it, the stickier it gets too.

Add the cocoa powder and process until evenly blended. Press the mixture into a deep plate, and shape into the thickness that you want your brownies. Put the plate into the freezer until the mixture is stiff enough to cut into pieces (about 20 min). Cut into squares and freeze until solid. Remove the pieces and place into a zip-lock bag or tupperware container. I store mine in the freezer because I like them colder, but you can store them in the fridge too.

You can experiment adding some other ingredients to spice these up a little bit. Cinnamon, nutmeg, candied ginger, etc. The skys the limit! But they are perfectly delectable with just those three basic ingredients. You can also substitute the walnuts for pecans if you get cankers from walnuts.

Let me know if you like them!

Bacon Killer

I had a dream about a week ago that I must write down. I figured my blog would be a good place since I haven't posted in it in FOREVER (my mom still faithfully checks it though, bless her), and the only other option is my journal which would require many pages.

Before I launch into the actual dream, I have to preface it with a real-life short story because without this, the dream makes even less sense, if that is possible.

Last Sunday, a couple of guys from my ward invited my roommates and I over for lunch, followed by, "You can come help make it if you want!" Not really about what we wanted after that, but we liked the guys, so we were willing to help out. The chef will remain unnamed because, though I am sure he will not ever read this post, my luck has ALWAYS been that when I talk about someone, they hear about it. I would hate to be even grapevine responsible for his next girlfriend or fiance losing faith in his cooking abilities, so we will kindly call him Bob.

The menu included fancy eggs over rice, bacon, and orange juice with cinnamon rolls for dessert (The orange juice was not under the eggs, but in a glass). I chopped peppers and cried over the onions that Bob chopped and then hovered over Bob while he sauted them both. At some point, I noticed that the microwave was running, so I glanced inside. To my horror, the slowly nuking content was BACON. I think I said something subtle, like "Uh, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?"

Bob said, "Speeding things up."

I think I just stared at him, open mouthed. Then I snatched his man card out of his hand and launched into a speech about how NO ONE microwaves bacon, how nasty microwaves make everything taste, and how NO ONE microwaves bacon. Then I sprang over to the microwave and punched the off button with the air of one saving a child from eating drain-o.

I said, "I will cook it, it won't take long!"

About then, I looked down at Bob's man card in my hand and when I realized it was pretty much shredded, I tried something super lame, like, "But we can totally microwave it if you want..."

That is really all you need to know from that incident to understand the dream. Let me just say that to Bob's credit, he still fed me that delicious meal. Good thing I have some time before I get married to a man to practice treating man cards with more respect.

SO! The dream.

The setting was a family reunion with my Papa's side. It began with some kind of competition between all the girl cousins my age while the rest of the family acted as audience, key members being the judges. For one of the tasks, we were on stage and our goal was to pretend to be pregnant and be exceptionally funny. I did my best. I thought my performance was really good, but everyone cheered a great deal for one of my cousins which I thougth wasn't very fair considering she has actually been pregnant.

The next task was to ride a horse around an indoor arena. One at a time, my cousins took their turn in the arena while the rest of us waited on stage. Finally, it was my turn. I approached the gate to the arena and spoke with the horse woman standing there. She informed me that I had to wait because the horses had to "warm up." So, I peered into the arena. Apparently, the warm up involved both horses pulling a big rake through waist high sand. The horses were also as high as my waist, so you can imagine this was quite the task for them.

I didn't want to offend the women, who was obviously a professional, so I said, "Wow, that's... impressive." She looked at me seriously and said proudly, "My horses are very strong."

The wait dragged on and on, so I turned away from the arena and there stood Jon Jon, a friend of mine from Anasazi who had recently gotten married. He looked like he was on death's door... sickly, skinny, pale. He was even balding.

I said, "Hi Jon... uh, how's it going?"

He sighed and said, "Oh man, Kathryn. Marriage is way harder than I thought it would be. There just isn't enough food. Ever."

I can't remember what I said, probably something compassionate. It seemed to me that this encounter had taken about 20 minutes, though, so I was anxious to see if it was my turn in the horse arena yet. I turned back to the gate and the whole scene inside had changed.

There were no horses in sight, the arena floor had been covered in fake green grass and there were lots of booths set up with flowers all around them. All the family was inside, milling about. I got the feeling that I wasn't going to get my turn on the horse and I was getting pretty frustrated.

I went inside and found my cousin sitting on the grass doing a craft. She wouldn't look at me as I approached. I could tell she was super upset.

"Hey, cousin. I feel like something happened, like you are upset about something. I dont' really know what it is, though...."

Finally, she glared up at me and said pointedly, "Oh. You know."

I just stood there gaping at her. I opened my mouth to say something else to her and one of my aunts pulled me aside and said, "You really don't know why she is upset?"

I shrugged with wide-eyed frustration.

She looked at me with pity and said, patting my arm, "It was the bacon."

Something in me sank deep into the pit of my stomache. It was the feeling of being caught enslaved by my past. I made my way back outside the arena. I was surprised to find Jon Jon still there. Always a pal for listening to my venting, Jon stood there looking sickly while I started to complain about how upset my cousin was and how unjust it all was when suddenly I stopped and stared at him. "Wait... I WASN'T THE ONE WHO MICROWAVED THE BACON." Jon looked bewildered and I turned on my heel to go back into the arena and redeem myself.

And then I woke up.

Bottom line. Don't microwave bacon. You will have nightmares about it.

Pursuit

This blog is going to change a bit from here on out...

I am embarking on a crusade to heal my mind and body. I have become a bit obsessed of late with gathering information on healthly eating and natural living. Everyone else shares their obsessions on the blogosphere, so I will too.

Let me start with my conversation with Charlie. His name is not Charlie, but I don't remember what it is. Isn't it interesting the number of people who have impacted our lives and have no idea? Names are not really that important, I feel. I remember Charliet the person. I had one really intriguing conversation with him and haven't seen him since.

During my second work period at the Anasazi Foundation about two years ago, I met Charlie through one of the other trail walkers, Brittany. Elicia and I were staying with one of her relatives and we had thrown some kind of shindig. Once everyone had wandered off home, Brittney, Charlie, Elicia and I remained and we started talking about healthy eating.

I had slowly been gaining momentum toward my own health food transformation for a couple of years due to a number of books and studies I had chanced upon. The first book that really got me thinking about what diet could do for my health was The Shwartzbein Principle. Another reading was The China Study. I won't go into my thoughts on either of those in this post, but suffice it to say these readings had primed me for this conversation with Charlie.

Until that moment, I had never met anyone my age who was a serious raw foodist. Charlie declared he had been raw for four months. I engaged him with question after question about his experience with it and he enthusiastically answered each one. In fact, it was his enthusiasm that impressed me the most. It was not just excitement, but a fervent zeal. He had discovered truly optimal health and he was eager to share his story.

Charlie told me about the many benefits he had experienced from going raw, ones I have become familiar with in my studies since: abundant energy, weight loss, eye sight improvement, healthy glowing skin, etc. However, his description of mental, emotional and even spiritual vitality resonated with me. He said the biggest surprise benefit of eating raw, whole roods was the clarity and balance of thought, emotion and spiritual sensitivity he had experienced. He described a "fog" lifting.

Charlie said, "It was as though I had never lived before. I can't even describe it. I had no idea this kind of health was possible!"

I looked at his clear eyes and calm demeanor and I decided I wanted it too.

What he said next filled me with a tiny sense of panic.

"Most people have no idea how sick they are. They will live their entire lives without knowing what real health feels like."

I do not want that to be me!

It has been about two years since that conversation and though I have been making strides towards a whole foods diet, I have never committed completely. I have not taken the dive into the deep end. I have surrounded myself with whole, unprocessed foods but I am still keeping a wandering hand buried in the cookie jar (literally). This will not do. If I want to enter Charlie's world, I have to take the leap. Everyone who has done it says it is worth it. I want to know for myself and I will share my journey with you here.

Next post: my raw brownie recipe. They are the ONLY thing that has ever convinced me that going off of refined sugar is possible...

Fear for the Deer

My childhood was fantastic. Really. The more years that collect between then and now, the more I realize that I had an ideal environment for a child to grow up in. I think a child should spend more time in the worlds of their imagination than they do in reality during certain years. I know that I did. I know that many of you are thinking, "Well, that explains a lot..." which is the same response I get when I tell people I was home schooled. Sigh. Maybe it does explain a lot about me. But I like who I am, so that's okay.

One of the unique things about my childhood was that I played with my cousins far more than any other children. My cousins were my best friends. We played weird games. I don't even think I could really expound on them here without the permission of a couple of my cousins. Not strange, creepy or gross, just different. Awesome games. All the "little kids" were jealous. I tried to get my new "city" friends to play similar pretend games when I moved away from my cousins to Utah, and they thought I was a crazy one. But whatever.

We had our own little club. And we all had our place in it. Not officially, of course. All groups create a certain dynamic and people naturally fall into roles.

Brittany was the mature one, who made sure our games didn't get too "stupid." Brittany always came up with the cool names, painted the big picture for us so we knew just how "cool" our game was. Of course, it wasn't a game to us. It was more real than all the other every day stuff we had to do when we couldn't be together. When we weren't actually playing it, we were planning and creating so that we could play it even better the next time we got together. I think my cousins would agree that we all walked around as though we had some greater calling, a secret identity that was who we really were that we were simply forced to suppress most of the time. So,  Brittany, kept us grounded. Not in reality, but kept our fantasy a little bit closer to the ground.

 Aspen was the wild one who blasted any boundaries we thought we had to smithereens. Her defiance of "The Parents" was awe-inspiring at times. With a gleam in her eye, she would say, "Hey guys..." and out would come the most brilliant and terrifying idea ever. I never let on, but most of the time I was thinking, "Uh, no." This was either because it was too definitely against the rules and I was scared of the trouble we would be in, or because I thought it would get me too wet or filthy or  require me to spend too much time in the dark (which was my kryptonite in all make-believe adventures) or involved ingesting something that I knew I couldn't survive. I always gaped at her hoping my fear looked more like excitement and said, "Yeeeeaaahh!" And we would do it. Most of the time, they turned out to be the craziest and most memorable moments of my young life. And somehow, we never died.

Ely was the all-knowing, all-powerful one. I believed for way too many years that he knew everything. I never questioned anything he said. He spoke with such authority and confidence that I simply had no doubt that he knew exactly what he was talking about. He did know a lot. But mostly he had this incredibly creative and logical brain that would churn out theories that sounded entirely legitimate. I bet half the time he made up stuff, he was much closer to being right than most little kids. 

And here at last is the main story of this post. The deer. I can see this moment so clearly in my head. Ely and I were on the well-beaten dirt path to the creek on Grandma's property in Pocatello, ID. Trotting down the path brushing our fingers over the tops of the tall grasses in her field must have inspired a teaching moment in Ely. He stopped dead, whipped around and said, "Hey, Kathy check this out." Magic words coming from Ely. I knew something super cool was coming. Even if I didn't see the coolness factor initially, I knew it was only due to my ignorance and that Ely would educate me.

Ely snapped off one of the grass tops and gave me a significant look. I leaned closer.

He held the grass top up and squinted at it. "See this? See these little barbs? If you rub your fingers up it, it's smooth. If you rub it down though, its like sticky. See?" I  tested his information. Sure enough, my fingers got caught on the way down.

Ely put the grass on the arm of my shirt, "Now check this out." He slowly rubbed the grass with his fingertip and to my surprise, it crawled up my arm! Ely was so cool. My belief that he knew everything was cemented forever. I thought that this was the end of the lesson, so I happily applied my new knowledge and made the grass crawl up my sleeve again and again. But Ely wasn't finished.

"Did you know that's how it kills deer?" he said, grabbing a hunk of the innocent looking grass beside us in a fist as though it were a snake about to strike. He glared at it for effect while I gaped at him.

"Really?" I breathed.

"Yeah. Did you see how that climbed up your shirt? Well, it does the same thing to the deer." I pictured the grass crawling up the deer's legs, but I couldn't see how this could lead to fatality, so I waited for more.

Ely's eyes got wider and his voice dropped, "They eat it and the grass sticks in their gums. Then slowly, slowly it moves up through their gums until it gets to their brains. And then it starts to grow in there. Then one day, they drop down dead." He smacked his hands together for dramatic finish.

This was too much even for my faith. Skepticism crept in. "Nuh uh. . ."

"Yes, it happens, Kathy!" Then he offered the final blow. "I would tell your mom if I were you before your horses eat it." He knew that we planned to bring our horses on our next visit for a couple of days.

All doubt was blasted away by panic. I must have started to wring my hands and whine incoherently because I remember that Ely tried to herd me down the trail to the creek, perhaps hoping that our original reason for coming would help me forget my distress. The urgency, however, was unrelenting. I told my mother the moment I saw her about the dangers facing our horses when we brought them to Grandma's house. I think she laughed and said, "No honey, that grass can't kill horses."

"But Ely said. . .!"

Despite my warning, we pastured our horses at Grandma's house for a weekend. I knew that they would appear fine and healthy until the grass had time to fill their brains, so they would probably drop dead when we got them back home.

They never did, of course. Somehow though, I steadfastly believed Ely's every word for years to come. That's how convincing he was.

I still believe my cousin Ely knows almost everything. And he is still really, really cool.

The Love Tunnel

Sounds sketch, right? Well, it's not. Sorry.

 I just realized that if I don't write about the rest of my time in Honduras in little bits at a time, then it will never get written about. Or read about. The reasons being that I am too overwhelmed by how much there is still to write and that people have stopped reading my blog because of the ridiculously long posts I have been spewing out. Not that I blame them!

 So, there will follow this post many more like it. Short, sweet, and hopefully containing only the most prized nuggets from the remainder of my time in Honduras.

This tale comes from Elicia and I's trip to Tela, the "best beaches on the eastern shore" of Honduras, said my trusty Lonely Planet Guide. We took a boat tour out to a national park called Parque Nacional Jeannette Kawas, named after a woman who was murdered trying to defend the park from greedy developers in 1995. Lonely Planet guide again (seriously, if you are every traveling anywhere, it is completely worth it to buy one of those).

After an eventful walk through the rain forest (following posts: poisonous spiders, attractive tour guide, man-eating jellies, and the famous parrot, Captain Henry Morgan), we hopped back on the boat for a quick spin around Punta Sal ("Salt Point." Whoever names some of these places seriously must have had NO creative capacity). Our boat man stopped the boat right on cue several yards away from a narrow tunnel through some large rock cliffs. Our guide waved in the direction of the tunnel and said that this was the tunnel of ------ (I don't remember what it was called) and that there was an ancient tradition of the natives that it could determine if a young man or woman was ready for marriage. All they had to do was to swim through the tunnel and make it out to the other side. I couldn't help thinking that we make it WAY too complicated back home...

He grinned and asked if anyone wanted to try it. It was the same grin he used when he told us what the howler monkeys were saying, so naturally I assumed that he was joking. But his pause lasted long enough that we all knew he expected a response. My hand shot up. The rest of the group smiled and nodded their heads to humor him, as was typical of them (our group was composed of old, white, bermuda short clad, sunscreen-smothered tourists who were probably staying in a hotel that cost at least 10 times what ours did). The tour guide flashed that gorgeous smile at me and said, "Okay, but I have to come with you and you have to wear your life-jacket." He must have an expert sense for the life-jeacket reluctant ones, because he read my mind. I hate life jackets.

I said, "Wait, are you serious? We can swim through it?"

"Yes!" Another gorgeous smile.

I turned to Elicia. "You are coming with me right?"

She said, "Uh, yeah!" She is in love, after all.

So we kicked off our flip-flops and giggled and squealed a bit. The waves of annoyance coming from the rest of the group were thick, but we just avoided eye contact. I bet they have no idea how fun it is to squeal. Probably haven't done it in years. We jumped over-board and waited for the guide to join us.

I took the lead into the tunnel. It was more narrow than it had appeared from the boat and there were creepy looking bugs on the walls, antennae as long as my arm, it seemed . I bravely swam on, though. This was no time to get squeamish. I had to prove my wifely desireability. I was making good time with a nice breast stroke when it got darker and my brain forced me to wonder about the depths beneath me. I suddenly couldn't swim shallow enough. I broke into a frenzied doggy-paddle, fully aware of how stupid it looked.

I was about half-way through when the real test came. The waves from the other side were coming stronger and I was having a hard time battling them. Finally, one of them washed over me and I began to flail around, avoiding grabbing on to the bug-covered walls at all costs. I think I must have been making some kind of noise, gurgling or gasping or something, because Elicia said from behind me, "Uh, Kathryn? You can stand up."

I craned my neck around and there was Elicia and the guide standing in the water, the same waves that had nearly drowned me lapping gently at their knee-caps. I staggered to my feet and grinned sheepishly while they had a good laugh. Elicia really let it ring. I knew I would never live this down. Elicia would forever share this unfortunate incident whenever my marriageability was discussed (Those of you who think that this is a unnecessary worry don't know how often women talk discuss marriageability).

We walked across the sand until it got deeper again and then swam easily to the boat waiting on the other side. The boat man yanked us both in turn into the boat by the life-jacket straps. If you have ever been pulled into a boat that way, you know that it is incredibly awkward. There is no way to do it gracefully. I plopped into the bottom of the boat and scrambled quickly into my seat, feeling about as ready for marriage as my two year old neice. The rest of the tour group chortled politely as though entertained by our childishness.

I sat there dripping wet and wondered if the point of the whole thing was to inform young ladies just how NOT ready for marriage they were. Still, I had made it through. Hadn't I? Perhaps lessons in humility and laughing at yourself are some of the best preparations for marriage anyway.

Elicia laughed for a long time. Funny, though, how quickly she skipped over the pictures of the tunnel when we were showing our Honduras pictures to her boyfriend...