I can relate to Charlie Brown....

I get him: The existential angst, the wondering "what it's all about," looking forward to things that end up turning into crap...

Just when the fireplace fiasco is behind us, we find ourselves mired in yet another swirl of frustration. The painter we fired is still beaking off. She mailed Lorenzo a long letter that only served to prove how ridiculous her final invoice was. There it was on paper, how each day was spent. Thirty hours in total  painting a seven-foot hallway & one short stairwell and...it's still not finished. Hour after expensive hour...day after slow-as-molasses day....one hundred and fifteen hours...and not a single room finished. The main floor has only been primed. This is headache number one.

Shortly after Lorenzo terminated her, and after he was sufficiently healed from the insult of being called a strange little man, he was told about another painter on the island. I was ready to pass out. Did you ever watch the series "Northern Exposure?" This is what passed through my mind: some guy in a plaid jacket with leaves and twigs stuck in his hair, lumbering up the driveway with a paint bucket. And a bong...

 But Lorenzo, the eternal optimist sunny-bunny that he is, took a chance on another islander. He came highly recommended, and he said he could finish the job in a few days and his quote was excellent. So he began working...

This weekend, Lorenzo stayed in town and we were almost giddy about it. Friday night, we went shopping downtown and then went out to our favourite Italian restaurant which is just down the street from our house. Red wine, flickering candle, all is right with the world. This was our anniversary dinner, six days late.

Saturday rolls around. Lorenzo's cell phone rings...I hear, "Oh no....you're kidding?"

When Lorenzo ran out of paint doing the ceiling, he went to Home Hardware and they colour-matched our Benjamin Moore paint to their Beauti-Tone paint. Their website guarantees a perfect match. The painter said there was a marked difference. Then I hear my husband suggesting that he come over with some Benjamin Moore paint. I felt this was ridiculous, to blow $150 on ferry trips just to deliver paint. So he called Home Hardware to explain the crisis that was unfolding.

The person in charge of colour-matching wasn't there. So, Lorenzo told the painter to continue with the walls. Problem is, he's running out of wall paint as well.

The next day, a brilliant solution appears: a Mayne Island courier will pick up the paint for us for a nominal fee. Great. We email him the colours, and everything is a go. But then...
Hurricane Dunderhead blows in and all the power goes off in our cottage. The winds rip through the island with such force that trees are down. A branch gets snapped off our maple tree and makes a bee-line for the painter's truck. It misses his bumper by an inch. My uncle's boat canopy gets launched into the air like a frisbee and ends up trapped upside down against his house.

Paintus interruptus.

At this point, all professionalism is gone. My poor Guido whines to the painter, "Are we cursed? Is the entire universe aligned against us? Will my cottage ever get painted?" Calmly, the painter explains that power outages happen all the time. Don't worry dude, your cottage will get painted.

In the meantime, a molar that I've had root canalled twice was starting to act up. An excursion into dental hell unfolds and I'm applying every home remedy in my arsenal: tea tree oil, peppermint oil, seal-salt compresses....  The lovely cozy weekend we envisioned turns into a black swirl of pain. The rain is pounding down, the kids are making noise, my son is hammering on his drums, the dog wants to go for a walk. And then everyone wants dinner...

Today, I saw my dentist and the tooth has to be extracted. Here is my prediction: in the not-so-distant future, we will regard root canals with same disbelief that we imagine blood-letting, or arsenic cures from the 18th century. Root canals fail at least 50-percent of the time because anaerobic bacteria is almost always present in the root. Left trapped, without oxygen, it mutates. Years go by, and then BOOM. I will never have another root canal. They are being linked to many auto-immune diseases.

If you grew up in the 1970's, there's a good chance your mouth was drilled to smithereens. My brother, sister, and myself must have had the most sadistic dentist who ever lived. All of us have been told that our molars were drilled beyond anything that was reasonable or even ethical. Did our parents notice? They were too busy watching Carol Burnett...

My kids have never had a cavity. But we were always being told that we had cavities, and now I think it was all a pile of BS. So there's a good chance that I'm going to have serious problems with my overly-drilled molars. So I went to the library and started reading these books... I've learned a lot.

 

*     *     *     *


So that's the scoop.
The good news is, Lorenzo and I are always able to come up with " what if " scenarios that leave us doubled over in hysterics: a massive pine tree is going to squash our cottage. The painter will get attacked by a bat. He'll slip on a frog. It's a glorious sunny day on Mayne Island but there's a gloomy rain-cloud suspended over our cottage. The neighbours are having a pleasant barbecue while Lorenzo does battle with a plague of blood-thirsty locusts.

Our cottage starts to decay before our very eyes, like something out of a horror movie...

It felt good to laugh, even though it hurt my infected tooth.


*     *     *     *

Here is one really exciting thing to report: I was determined to learn Oscar Peterson's "Hymn to Freedom." So I went to Long & McQuade and dealt with a really dumb guy who thought it was spelled "Him." Then he typed in "Peaterson" and "Oskar" until I nearly wept. Finally, I got the book ordered.

When it arrived and I began to play it, I quickly realized that it was a cheesed-down version and it lacked all of the snappy piano licks that I was desperate to learn. After doing some snooping around on the internet, I found out that many years ago, Oscar Peterson put out a book called "Note for Note" which featured exact transcriptions of his pieces. Yay! All I have to do is get this book and I'll turn into a wicked piano player. But the book is out of print and is being sold on Amazon and Ebay for upwards of $900. I was deflated. On a whim, I checked the Vancouver Library data base and....oh my god, they have a copy. This is the best thing to happen to me in so long - I can't wait until my request comes in.

What else? When I felt like I wanted to drop a canon-ball on our cottage, I escaped into house fantasy and downloaded pictures that cheered me up. And gave me inspiration...

What a beautiful house. Our cottage has the same Dutch colonial design...with a few tweaks, it has potential and maybe it could end up not looking so much like the Amityville Horror House...

What I hate most about the exterior are the blue deck railings. They are such an eye-sore and they're an obstacle to enjoying the nature that surrounds us...

We're thinking of replacing them with cable-wire. I love this - your eye passes right through the railing because the cable-wire is almost visually transparent. With all of our surrounding trees, it would feel as though we're suspended in a tree house...

Stainless steel cable wire is very expensive, but there are much cheaper options. Lorenzo says this will be very time-consuming and tricky. I have faith that he can do it! 

I also find myself pondering our small deck on the south-side of the cottage. I want this to be a very special spot, because I love the sun and I think it could be made very pretty. Here is how it looks now...

And here is how it could be!

Our plan is do board & batten siding...

add some decorative accents...

and voila! Our little engine-that-could, our sad Charlie Brown tree of a cottage, could end up like this. Seriously, it could...

And here's what else I'm excited about. Our cottage is on a corner, and sits atop a hill...

This presents many landscape challenges. We have a third of an acre to play with - right now your eye just travels downward. A giant slope is only good if you`re planning to buy a toboggan...

and currently, it's not very pretty...

But it is going to be a glorious, magical piece of island property. We're going to terrace the land, add plantings, have sneaky little areas to sit and read a book, and when it's done...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It will be a lot of hard work, but I'm looking forward to it. I already know what I want to plant, and once the inside is finished, we'll be itching to get going on another project. We are incapable of sitting around doing nothing. So I did some reading on grass, because in the summer grass typically looks burnt and ugly. Here is the typical west-coast lawn in summer...

 We keep planting the wrong grass. You need grass with deeper roots.

Lorenzo wonders what I do on the computer. I research stuff. Check this out:

A guy spent eight years developing a grass seed that has won awards and was featured in This Old House magazine. It's called Pearl's Premium...

Requires no chemicals, guaranteed to be lush and green with only one watering and one mowing per month. Think of the carbon footprint of the typical stupid lawn: gas mowers pumping pollution into the air, noise, fertilizers, thousands of gallons of water...it's insane. I'm going to plant Pearl's Premium seed in between flower beds. The pictures are terrific...

And it's guaranteed to thrive and flourish in the toughest of conditions...

Well, that's my blog for tonight. I need to take my penicillin now...

I am really looking forward to seeing this film...

THE DUST BOWL - Ken Burns Documentary

November 18 and 19
8:00–10:00 p.m. ET on PBS

Lorenzo went to Mayne on Saturday morning. He'll be coming home tomorrow morning. He isn't feeling well - has a bit of a chest cough. He really needs a rest.

Anyway, he did what we should have done from day one: he bought a paint sprayer. It's made by Wagner, it cost $99. at Home Depot....

In about an hour, the ceiling on the main floor was done. The next day he gave it a second coat. He could not believe how easy it was, and what a great job it did...

Is there something wrong with us? Why did we hire and fire Dud? Why did we hire and fire whats-her-face? And why did I spend three whole days just to paint a bathroom? You'd think after all the renovating we've done we would have learned a few things. I think we were intimidated by sprayers - that's the only explanation I can come up with...

I could have painted my furniture in minutes, instead of doing it the slow way with a brush. Wow... This really changes everything.

The wood stove arrived...

There it is...

I was talking to my brother on the phone tonight and he asked how the cottage was coming along. I admitted that I wish we'd never bought it. This has taken such a toll on us. Countless weekends spent apart has been hard on the kids and hard on our marriage. He spent our anniverary in a construction zone while I was here with the kids. It has physically and mentally exhausted my poor husband. He's had to endure dozens of ferry trips back and forth, difficult and complicated renovations including re-locating the bathroom and repairing the king beam. He's installed new doors and windows, new electrical, new plumbing... When we had trees removed he had to clean up all the branches and stumps which took two solid days.

And while he's there, his phone never stops ringing because he has a company to run.
Add to this, having to deal with unqualified painters who don't know what they're doing. They have cost us nothing but time and money and we have only ourselves to blame - we should have bought a sprayer!

It has been harder than we anticipated, obviously. My brother said we should have bought a piece of land and built a house from scratch; it would have been easier and probably would have ending up costing about the same.  Or maybe not... if you buy a vacant lot that has to be cleared and leveled, has no services (hydro) and you have to arrange for water and septic and a bunch of other stuff including permits, it can be a headache and we didn't want to go that route. We chose this headache instead!

Just writing about this blasted cottage makes me feel tired...

We are very lucky though, and I need to focus on that. For twenty years, Lorenzo and I swore that one day we would spend Christmas somewhere warm. This year, we're going to Mexico - we leave on December 20th. I don't think Lorenzo has ever needed a holiday more...

Playa Gemelas, Puerto Vallarta 
(view from the apartment we've rented....)

This cottage is going to kill us...

As I mentioned in a previous post, we hired a painter. C**** was so eager for work that she called Lorenzo three times. He gave her the job and we were really hopeful, especially after the Dud Debacle.

When someone is working in your home when you aren't there to supervise, a great deal of trust is assumed. Her price was $25./hour, and we were warned that she is slow. But the work was good, so whatever. Anyway, the first bill came in at $620. We paid it. The upstairs bathroom was already done (by me) and I had also re-painted our daughter's room. All there was to do up there was repaint two bedrooms, and do the hallway.

When Lorenzo went over there last weekend, the upstairs wasn't finished, the stairwell wasn't finished, and the main floor had only been primed. This seemed a bit odd, especially considering that she took on a helper. Lorenzo assumed she had only put in a few hours as she had other projects going on. When Lorenzo left on Sunday, she handed him an invoice. When he opened the envelope on the ferry he nearly choked on his breakfast burrito.

The amount was for $1825. and this didn't include the helper's hours. In other words, we're supposed to pay her a total of $2400. (plus her helper's fee) and not a single room is finished. No trim work has been done, not a single door has been painted.  $1825 equals 73 hours of work. And not one single area of our tiny cottage is finished.

So he called her up and expressed how concerned he was about this. She said, "You don't understand. There is a great deal of brush-work involved, etc." Lorenzo said, "Fair enough, but we're talking nearly three thousand dollars, if we include your helper's fee, and not one single room is finished. " Knowing this didn't bode well, he asked for a quote for the remaining work. She agreed to write up an estimate and breezily quipped, "I don't really need this job, you know."  Wow.

A few days later, she says she needs 6 more days at $47./hour (for herself and her helper) and another 2 days at $25./hr. The grand total would be $5101. not including the previous hours for her helper that we still haven't received. And this would be assuming she could finish in 8 days which is impossible, given the turtle-with-tendinitis-like pace at which this project has been proceeding. She started on October 10th. It's been nearly a month. At this rate, it will morph into a six or seven thousand dollar fee. For a cottage that's about 1000 square feet.

Lorenzo called her this morning and explained that $5000 plus extras for a puny shack is just not right. She replied, "I don't know where you're getting your math." He spelled it out.
She refused to acknowledge that her pricing may be perceived as a tad unreasonable. In addition, he had told her to charge his Home Hardware account for any primer she might need. The charges have totalled $297. Some of the items listed are drop-cloths, rollers, saran wrap, sanding pads, sponges, rags, paint trays, etc. When he suggested that a painter should be responsible for her own tools the conversation went rapidly down-hill.

She called him "weird" and then she accused him of being unethical. This really bothered me, because Lorenzo is highly ethical; he's a kind and decent man. I don't know another human being as generous as my husband. So when I heard that she called him unethical, I wanted to jump on the next ferry.

The dialogue ended with her becoming very angry. She said he's created "bad karma" for himself. Lorenzo said, "How have I created bad karma? Tell me what I've done wrong." Her reply was, "You are a strange little man."  Click.

When Lorenzo called me this morning to tell me all this he sounded drained. I cannot help but feel that we are either cursed when it comes to hiring people, or that the world is spilling over with incompetence. This is unbelievable and completely disappointing. Another painter fired.

Concerned that an angry woman has the key to our house, Lorenzo talked to our neighbour and asked that she retrieve the key for us. Our neighbour said, "You know, a few times she came here asking what time it was." I guess she doesn't own a watch. But somehow she knows how many hours she worked? Someone else on the island was watching her going in and out of our cottage and expressed some concern that something didn't seem right.

The only thing that offers a bit of vindication is that her invoice is outstanding. Legally, we could pay her nothing. There was no contract. But we would never do that, being the ethical people we are. Lorenzo will deduct her bogus hardware expenses, and arrive at a figure he feels to be fair.

What is most bewildering, is that C**** quit on us just because Lorenzo questioned her pricing, which was hardly unreasonable. How unprofessional.

So this weekend, we will probably celebrate our 17th anniversary apart. We need the ceiling painted before the new stove goes in. Lorenzo will do that, and then I will go over and finish painting the cottage. The whole situation is patently unfair. If her comment about "bad karma" is referring to some kind of future retribution, she is dealing with the wrong people. Lorenzo is Italian. Just saying....


*    *    *    *


Hey! Obama won! YAAAAAY!!!

 

 

Tonight on the CBC:

-Scientists from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre said an area of sea ice bigger than Alberta disappeared this summer from the Arctic

-Spring Arctic snow pack melting fast, study warns

-Environment Canada researcher says climate change happening quicker than expected

 

-The journal of the American Geophysical Union, said the changes in the past five years were "profound."

 

 

*     *     *    *

 

Lorenzo was supposed to come home on Saturday night, but the hearth job was taking longer than anticipated. Everything takes longer than anticipated. And then he ran out of grout. Home Hardware only had white grout, and he needed gray. I suggested he use the left-over grout from the last tile job. Lorenzo said, "But it's the wrong colour." He sounded very frustrated. I suggested that he use it anyway; who cares? You can always paint it.

So he used it, but still didn't have enough. You know, when he was buying the grout at Home Depot, he told the guy exactly what he was doing, and how big the hearth pad was. The employee told him he only needed one bag. Feeling doubtful Lorenzo said, "Are you sure?" Rule of thumb: assume everyone is wrong. About everything.

In desperation, he drove down to Home Hardware in the driving rain to buy some white grout. The lady working there mentioned that she had some black grout at her house, and she was kind enough to bring it to our cottage. Lorenzo mixed them up like a scientist and managed to achieve a reasonable colour match. Final result: Good enough.

 

 

 

 Once it's cleaned up and sealed it will be fine. The wood stove, and all the paraphernalia that goes with it, will pretty much hide any flaws anyway.










 

 

 

 

A lazy, rainy, Friday night...
(technically it's Saturday, but I'm still up, of course)

Even the animals are crashed out...

This my second attempt to write in this blog tonight. I had it nearly finished when I pressed the wrong button and suddenly everything on the screen vanished. Poof ! And Lorenzo thinks he's working hard....

*    *    *    *

The destruction in the wake of Hurricane Sandy is so disheartening. While watching NBC last night I tried to imagine losing my home - losing everything we've worked for over the past twenty years - in a matter of minutes.  Everything gone; your house, your car, your personal belongings - photographs, documents, jewelry, art work, Mother's Day cards your children made for you, home movies, musical instruments... It must be absolutely soul-crushing. You see news footage of people stepping through the rubble, searching for anything that might be recognizable. Houses that were appraised at 1.6 million on the Jersey Shore are flattened overnight. Gone. We have some family friends who live in New Jersey and we haven't been able to contact them. I sure hope they are alright...

You know, they keep giving pretty names to these awful catastrophes. "Sandy"  "Katrina"   "Irene"... 
A hurricane should be called "Muttonhead" or "Hope Cruncher." Maybe "Hurricane Cheney" or some other fitting descriptor.

*     *     *     *

Lorenzo left for Mayne Island last night. I packed him a DVD from the library on how to install hardwood floor...

He's confident that he already knows how, but it doesn't hurt to learn a few more things. I also packed him a sign to attach to our hydro meter:

Smart meters are going to be installed on Mayne Island, and when I heard that I snapped. I have one in my house that was installed against my wishes and I'm wondering if it's why I have headaches nearly every day. I didn't make the connection until Lorenzo suggested it. He's very bothered by this, as it feels like a violation of our rights. We bought this home, we pay huge property taxes, but we can't refuse something that we don't want, and that may impact our health.

Fourteen states in the US have created meter refusal programs. In California, they are allowing people to keep their analog meters after huge protests and intense opposition across the state. Individuals are allowed to pay $10 a month to have their meter read. I'd be more than willing to agree to that. But we have no such opt-out program here (at least not yet) so I called BC Hydro and explained to them that I have a brain tumor. They agreed to put a hold on installation...for now. Whether or not I actually have a brain tumor is really none of their business. I can't believe how little people know about this. Do some reading, educate yourself: http://www.citizensforsafetechnology.org/

Anyway, Lorenzo is pleased with the work the painters have done and is impressed by their attention to detail, although it seems to be going very slowly. But this is the very first time, in the twenty years that I've known Lorenzo, that we've hired painters we didn't have to fire. So this marks an historical moment in our lives. And one of the painters is in need of a washer and dryer. So we'll give him ours in exchange for labour, so this works out nicely. They have primed the main floor. It looks considerably brighter...

Here are some more views...

 

Lorenzo laid out the pebble tile, preparing to start on the hearth...

I really screwed up. The tile I picked for the legs of the wood stove to rest on look ridiculous. I should have gone with something much darker - it looks like four square eyes are staring out at you....or like four spots are missing.

The more I look at it, the more ticked off I feel. This is what happens when you're impatient. I went to Home Depot, there wasn't anything in a dark brown, and I thought, "good enough." No....it wasn't.

Maybe once it's grouted, it won't be as noticeable.
Who am I kidding - it looks wrong. It wouldn't bother me so much if we weren't installing a brand new lovely wood stove. Lorenzo hasn't said anything, but he tends to think all colours are kind of the same.

A first coat of paint has been applied to the stairwell. It needs a second coat and the ceiling still has to be done, but here's a pic...

*     *     *     *

This evening, I announced to my kids that I'd be taking them out for dinner. They have been taking off in three different directions for weeks now and I wanted to spend some "quality time" with them: sit down together, eat a meal, talk about current events, etc.  It sounded like a nice idea.

But before we even left the parking lot, it started: My daughter said something about her sort-of-boyfriend and her older brother said, "I can't figure out why you like him...he's such an idiot." That's always a productive way to begin a pleasant conversation. I braced myself and inwardly groaned. My daughter's eyes narrowed and out came a stream of invective that was shocking, coming from someone so small and pretty. It went downhill from there. During the entire meal, the two of them glared at each over their cheeseburgers. It was such a joy-filled experience. After dinner, I made them stay in the car while I went into the grocery store with my other son. When I came back, I asked them if they'd patched things up. They had - happiness restored!

Shortly after my mum died in 2001, I was reading a book and came upon a line that I have never forgotten:
"A woman without a mother or a daughter is a person who walks the earth alone."

It resonated with me. I had lost my mum but I had a daughter, and that was very comforting. It isn't that I don't cherish my sons - I love them in a way that is almost romantic. They are strong, and taller than me now. They get me into headlocks and make me feel their muscles. They make me laugh, and they tell me I look pretty. Sons are lovely. But there is a relationship I have with my daughter that is just different and more personal. She's female, for starters. We think a certain way, we don't make a lot of noise, and we're content to eat a sandwich for dinner. She's a great companion.

But since becoming a teenager, I almost feel as though I've lost her. My happy-go-lucky, always pleasant girl, has become shockingly bad tempered. Her brothers refer to her as "Snap Show." And the thing is, she's aware of it. She apologized to me tonight for being so nasty lately. Maybe she's making up for all the years when her brothers were taking the lion's share of the attention.

In any case, I've been feeling like a person walking the earth alone, but perhaps it's just existential angst. Or maybe it derives from the sense that somehow your perception of the world is vastly different from that of most people you know. It can be unnerving and I rarely speak about the things that are worrying me. Like global warming...smart meters...genetically modified food...the acidification of our oceans. I keep it locked in my brain and then I fling it all onto my blog. My poor readers!


*   *    *    *

I was walking my dog the other night in the rain and could feel water seeping into my boots. This marks winter number two with faulty-footwear, so I bit the bullet and bought myself a pair of MUCKERS! 

If I were a poet, I would write an ode to Clarks Shoes. They are so wonderful - even if you have finicky feet like me. You put them on, and you're bouncing on fluffy clouds. These boots are guaranteed water-proof and will be perfect for walking the dog in the trails when it's raining. And in Vancouver, when isn't it raining? I believe it has been raining steadily for three solid weeks.

Well, it's another fun-filled Friday night! I actually like nights like this, when it's raining outside. I light a bunch of candles, make chai tea, and find myself feeling very contented. We're so lucky to have a warm house and food to eat and beds to sleep in. And tonight I get the whole bed to myself, which is like winning the marital lottery. Lorenzo has taken to hugging his pillow in his sleep. Then he rolls toward me, and I've got this giant wall of pillow in my peripheral vision and I'm forced to the edge of the bed, clinging to the mattress like a drowning person. It is maddening.

Married people should have separate bedrooms - this nightly excursion to Frustration Land is ridiculous. Every woman I talk to quietly admits that her husband's snoring is making her crazy. Or the wife wants a freezing cold room and the husband wants the heat on. The discrepancies are endless. Sometimes I actually feel jealous that my kids get to retire to these lovely beds all by themselves. It's bad enough that we spend a third of our lives sleeping (what a waste of precious time) but to then have to toss and turn and feel like you're in purgatory, suffering from too much heat, too much closeness, snoring, etc. begins to feel like masochism. Or a form of terrorism. I adore my husband - but I'm a light sleeper, an insomniac, and I'm hot all the time. Virginia Woolf was right when she wrote "A Room of One's Own."

I believe it was Socrates who felt that sleeping needed to be abolished. In fact, many of the great thinkers and philosophers lamented over how much of their limited time on this earth was being squandered by this relentless need for oblivion. I hate sleeping. Every night, I put off going to bed. I read, I putter, I think about things... Even when my kids had me up at 5am, I would routinely go to bed at midnight or later. I love the night - the silence, the anonymity; I feel very alert at night and filled with ideas - I get excited by all the plans I have; all the great schemes waiting to be accomplished. I read and discover new things and I'm often seized by excitement for the coming day! 

Then I wake up the next morning and I want to stick my head in the oven. Mornings are tortuous, particularly when they follow a pattern of insomnia. I'll read until my eyes are crossing, turn the light off, fall asleep, and then.....I'm wide awake. It is certainly not a recipe for being a "morning person."  And being a "morning person" has nothing to do with being up. It has to do with how you feel. Lorenzo feels grrrreat in the morning. He's raring to go and full of energy.

My oldest son is like me; I hear him puttering around his room at one in the morning. He's reading or playing his guitar. The next day he's a zombie. Last June, his principal called to inform me that he'd been late for school seventy two times that year. What could I say? He suffers from insomnia, too. At night, he's talkative and creative. He and I have great conversations when everyone is asleep. The next morning he and I are silent while everyone else is functioning normally. I think you're born this way... The world is probably divided into two camps: morning people and night owls. Morning people are politicians, community organizers, and other busy-bee types. Night owls are musicians, writers, artists, and heroin addicts.

Last night, I read about xylitol, which is a natural occurring substance in our bodies.

It is a perfect sugar substitute with no after-taste, and it's safe for diabetics.
Here are some other health benefits:

*   Can reverse tooth decay and gum disease
*   Promotes regeneration of tooth enamel
*   Increases white blood cells
*   Lowers risk of ovarian cysts
*   Improves bone density
*   Increases skin thickness and collagen production
*   Low carb - good for weight loss
 
I bought a bag of it as I'm going to stop buying refined sugar. When I see my kids and Lorenzo scooping sugar into their coffee I cringe. It's technically a poison, so we really shouldn't be using it at all. 


Well, ciao for now!