Crystal Montoya

California to Ban Trans Fat!

Oh glorious day! If my sources are correct, California will be the first state to ban trans fat in restaurants and I could not be happier. Let's get to work on high fructose corn syrup next and then we can talk about aspartame, I am fired up and ready to go! Certain people will be surely thinking I am a wacko liberal that feels my government should force me to behave but those people are wrong. I am for as little government as possible; a small yet effective government. I do not want your right to do anything to be taken away, I just don't think you understand exactly what trans fat or high fructose corn syrup really are and what they cause our bodies to go through. I would like to suggest that the government who we currently employ to help protect us against things like trans fat have colluded with food companies and allowed these non foods to infiltrate our food system while tauting the supposed benefits and ignoring the most blaring evidence which is our heart disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes crises. 

The other day at work this woman asked me about a good(healthy) creamer for her coffee. I suggested that she use a little bit of organic half and half. She explained that she uses vanilla soy milk but she was hoping "the food scientists had developed something better, yet still healthy."  I literally had to control my gag reflex as not to vomit on this person. Really? I mean...really? We were standing in the premier health food store and you still think somehow mucking up the food with science could possibly be healthier? If you aren't lactose intolerant or a vegan then use a little bit of half and half - Cheeses rhymany! 

The people on the radio like Limbaugh, Hannity, or Beck who strongly feel it is their right to eat trans fat or high fructose corn syrup are normally the same people who have a strong relationship with God. I believe God gave us abundant, beautiful, and important foods to fuel His creation(us) with. I don't think God is happy about us applying our science to His food, at least not to the extent that we currently do. We are taking the food and transforming it with chemicals and processes that make it inedible, yet the shelves are lined with it. I feel your right to continue eating this impure, unnatural, and harmful food is interfering with my right to eat the wonderful, diverse, and healthy collection of food that God intended for us. I can't find actual food unless I seek it out, I have to pay way more because so many resources - our precious tax dollars - are being used to grow corn, process corn, invent more horrifying ways to muck up the corn, and sell it in almost everything.

Here's to Kim

There is a saying that goes something like: "People come into your life for either a reason, a season, or a lifetime." I guess reason people show up to help you out with something, or so you can help them with something. Something immediate and then that person leaves as quickly as they come. Season people are there to teach you something or so you can teach them. They'll be around for a little while but the relationship will just naturally run it's course once the season you or they need help with passes. 

It's the lifetime people that I am thinking of this morning. These are the true blue, by your side, through thick and thin kind of relationships. Parents normally fall into this category, sometimes a mentor will stay in your life always and if you're really lucky you may find a few lifetime friends. 

I recently listened to part of an audio book by Caroline Myss called Sacred Contracts. She suggests that all of this is completely premeditated and arranged before you are even born. She suggests that all of the major relationships and experiences you have in life have been discussed and decided upon by your soul. Something like all the souls that are ready to go to Earth get together and talk about what they need to learn in this life and what they are able to teach. 

One will ask to be available to help see someone through a difficult situation and another will say "I will go through that struggle for you so you can be available to help me." Adoption is probably a good example, here you have two sets of people, one who cannot have a child that they desperately want and another cannot give the child they are about to have all of the things they will need in life. According to Myss; this has all been prearranged and determined, there were things the souls involved needed to experience, they agreed to have that experience together and this is how it materialized. It's up to us to fulfill these contracts when we get here and you have to make the correct choices in life in order to be where you need to be to fulfill your contracts. Myss claims we don't remember any of these agreements that we made because we go through a complete cleansing of our memories of these agreements before we get here. 

I don't know if Myss is right or not but I hope she is. I like this entire concept and think it helps explain  why I've had some of the struggles I have. My soul needed to learn about these particular struggles, and hopefully my soul had a goal of helping to teach others something in the process. I am guessing some people are completely turned off by this concept as it is too new agey for them. Some people might even feel it is blasphemy. I plan to listen to the rest of the book. 

One of my lifetime people is my friend Kim. She called me on the phone at one of the apartment complexes I managed asking if I needed a maintenance supervisor. I actually did need one so she explained to me that I was going to give this job to her husband and she was right, I did give the job to her husband. At the time I thought Kim was a reason person - the reason she entered my life was to give me the most talented maintenance supervisor I have ever worked with. Thank you very much.

Kim and Sonny moved from Las Vegas to the apartment building in Seattle and they hit the place like a tornado. Within the first week Sonny was rewiring all of the fifty year old electrical panels and resurfacing the pool but I had better not even think about asking him to work more than five minutes of overtime, he would explain "My wife expects me home on time and I ain't gonna piss 'er off." Well, okey dokey then. If I had never met Kim, Sonny  would have had me believing she walked around with a whip within easy reach at all times, just ready to pounce if Sonny got out of line. For the first week or two, it's all I heard from him: "My wife ain't gonna be happy if my check ain't right." or "My wife ain't gonna be happy if I gotta go on a lot of after hours calls." 

Sonny just painted his wife as a wicked witch because it was a convenient way to get out of working overtime, it was easier to quote her to make sure his check was correct then to tell me that he is the one that is anxious about it. Sonny was hoping there would not be many after hours calls, Kim could really care less. I met Kim when I had to take something up to their apartment a week or so after they moved in. When she opened the door, her apartment had already been painted so at first I was looking beyond her at the Harley Davidson orange walls with tufts of white sponge paint pressed over it. It looked good. Kim looked at me and she gushed "Oh, you're so cute!" It wouldn't be until years later that I would understand the translation of that, which was "I hate you, you scrawny little bitch."