So as you all know, I am desperately trying to figure out how to go to BlogHer this summer without impacting our family’s regular budget. We have a weekend trip and a longer family vacation planned for this summer, and after several discussions, I agreed with my husband that those have to be our priority as far as money goes.

And by “several discussions”, I mean him trying to talk to me rationally, and me slamming doors and pouting. Because I’m mature like that.

I want to go to BlogHer more than just about anything. I’m waiting to hear if I have been chosen for a volunteer “BlogHership”, which covers the cost of the conference and would be a huge help. In the meantime, I’ve accepted a job helping a fellow blogger get a new blog started by hiring other bloggers to contribute posts. Which is a little scary because I’ve never been great at management and I have that huge procrastination problem, but the good thing is we are all friends, him and me and the writers I hired, so I’m hoping we’ll have fun with it and be successful too.

I’m thinking about copying something I saw on another blog yesterday which was a tab at the top of the page labeled “Affiliates”. On that page, she had all of her affiliate badges, with descriptions about the company. I thought that was really clever. I am an affiliate for Linkworth, for Foodbuzz, for Sponsored Reviews, and for Amazon.com.

Linkworth has lots of different types of ads-text link ads, linkPosts, linkInTxt (like Kontera), and linkWords. If you sign up to either buy ads or to run them on your site, I earn a commission when you make $100. I just want to be upfront about that. If you’re interested, please visit this URL–http://www.linkworth.com/?a=3719

Foodbuzz! Some of you have cooking blogs, and if you do, you can apply to be a featured publisher with Foodbuzz. You’ll have a page on the site to post recipes, rate the restaurants in your city, read reviews of restaurants all over the world, drool over yummy food photos, read food blog posts-it’s foodtastic, I tell you. Interested in signing up with your food blog? Do this, and I earn $50 if you are accepted as a publisher. I really do!

contact shannon@foodbuzz.com with the following information:

Full name:
Full name of referral: Elizabeth Edwards
Title of your blog:
Url:
Preferred email (or phone number):
Current Advertising program (if any):
Estimated Monthly Page Views (if you know):

So there you go. I’ve pimped out my two biggest affiliate programs, and now I must put my 2 year old to bed and clean up this pigsty of a living room. Plus pick contest winners and post on MomCooks and………..

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When I am asked to write a post on a specific topic, or using a specific keyword, I don’t say yes unless I feel I can do some good by giving out that information. I know, last year I was spamming it up because I needed the money, but trust me when I say that I am much more discerning now.

That being said, I want to make it clear that I am not writing about Chelation Therapy because I have had it, or because anyone I know has had it, or because I have had any kind of medical training whatsoever. I am dispensing information that readers might not otherwise find, and it is up to each reader to 1. decide if they are interested in the information and 2. TALK TO THEIR DOCTOR.

Please, do not do anything medical without consulting your doctor. I learned that the hard way when my Father bought a very heavily advertised weight loss pill from watching a commercial on TV, took it thinking it was harmless, and ended up in the hospital because the weight loss pill contains aspirin, which he is allergic to, and which was never mentioned in the commercial during that very brief part at the end about side effects. (If you must know, the name of the pill rhymes with “Delacore”).

And, to follow up on my previous post, if you are interested in learning more about Chelation Therapy, AND your Doctor approves the treatment AND says it is safe for you to order oral chelation products online, you can get the liquid chelation product, liquid Vitamin C & E, and a liquid multi-vitamin and mineral supplement to take during non-chelation weeks. Your doctor can give you more information on all of these products.

I understand that everything I publish on this blog is read by someone, is aggregated into a feed, and has the potential to influence someone’s decisions. I’ve given out the information, but it’s up to each of you to decide what to do with it. Thank you for reading this Table for Five Public Service Announcement.

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Read this list of symptoms and tell me if you have one or more of them, ‘kay?

* Hands, arms or legs feel cold or “go to sleep”?
* Do your legs get aches or pains on short walks?
* On slight exertion, do you get breathless?
* Is your memory worse than it used to be?
* Are you lacking the energy you once had?
* Test results indicate cardiovascular problems?

So I read that, and I’m like check, check, check. Do you know what that list of symptoms is indicating? Arterial blockage, that’s what. As in, the arteries carrying life-giving blood to your heart could be blocked-which, thanks, now I need to go lie down.

I’m not usually an alarmist, but damn, that’s kind of scary. Of course the logical thing to do now is call my lovely doctor Doctor Kim and ask her to run some tests. I wonder how much an MRI costs when you have to pay it upfront to satisfy your deductible.

Have any of you ever heard of chelation therapy? Me neither. And get this, it consists of a liquid called EDTA, which stands for ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, a common chelating agent used for enzyme deactivation and as a bacteriocide. No, I did not just type that out, I copy/pasted it from the Google Search, because there was no way I was going to get all those letters right this early in the morning.

There’s a liquid product called Cardio Renew which is a combination of amino acids and is 100% liquid EDTA. Amino acids are the “building blocks” of protein and are used by the body for healthy cell development. You take 14 drops of it in 2 ounces of mineral-free liquid like distilled water or pure juice, and do that six times a day, then five, then four. Apparently, the EDTA will bind with the free-floating minerals and metals in your system and flush them out.

I had no idea. Who knows what minerals and metals I could have floating around in there? No wonder my hands are always cold!

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This morning it was hard to wake up, and I stumbled out into the kitchen with my eyes barely open to make a pot of coffee. Imagine my surprise when I found Nathan (who is nine if you didn’t know) standing there stirring CoffeeMate and sugar into his mug.

Me: “oh, Dad made coffee before he left?”

Nathan: “No, I made it.”

Me: “um, you did? How did you know how?”

Nathan: “Dad showed me the other day.”

Me: blink blink

Forget the fact that I’ve been making coffee with him standing right there in the kitchen for months now, apparently he just needed his Dad to show him. And it was GOOD coffee, too. Not watery or too strong, just perfect. He’s on his way to making some woman a fine husband, that’s for sure.

Secondly, this morning I watched the movie Things We Lost In The Fire, starring Halle Berry, Benicio Del Toro, and David Duchovny. Kaitlyn was a little pouty about it not being a WonderPets episode, but I held my ground and kept the DVD on, and watched it all the way through. And you know what? It was pretty good! Berry and Duchovny play married couple Brian and Audrey, who are happily married with two children. Del Toro is Jerry, Brian’s childhood best friend who is also a heroin addict. The title refers to an electrical fire that destroys Brian and Audrey’s garage (although I guess when you live in a huge house with an indoor swimming pool, “garage” means building behind the main house that is big enough to be a house of it’s own).

I don’t want to give away the plot here, but I do want to say that if you enjoy good dramatic acting, this movie has it. There are strong performances by John Carroll Lynch (”Zodiac”) as Brian’s business associate and neighbor who befriends Jerry, Alison Lohman (”Matchstick Men”) as a woman who meets Jerry in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, and Omar Benson Miller (who just did an amazing episode of Law & Order) as Audrey’s brother who helps Jerry through detox.

The movie is available from Amazon.com as both a single disc and in HD. Both versions have a look at the making of the movie as well as deleted scenes. It’s a sad movie, to be sure, but the performances, especially by Berry and Del Toro, are Oscar-worthy. Want it now? Use this:

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When I first came across the book “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer at the library, I flipped through it, but at the time, a true story of a young man who followed a dream until it led to his death was not the kind of reading I was looking for. So my viewing of the movie of the same name, made from the story told in the book, was untainted by any knowledge of the story beyond the basics.

Following the book very closely, the movie version of “Into the Wild” tells the story of how,in 1990, a young man named Christopher McCandless (played by Emile Hirsch) graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, and rather than accept his parents’ offer to buy him a car and help him pay for grad school, he instead withdraw his entire savings, donated the majority of it to OXFAM (with a note instructing them to feed people with the money), and set off on what he imagined would be a grand adventure ending with him going to Alaska.

After abandoning his car and burning the rest of his money, McCandless proceeded to hitchhike, take jobs, and rely on the kindness of strangers as he made his way West. Along the way, he changed his name to “Alexander Supertramp” (he spent time jumping into empty train cars and riding the rails, known as tramping), worked as a grain harvester, and lived in “Slab City”, a free RV park in the desert of Southeast California. He carries books by Thoreau and Jack London, believing that man truly needs nothing but his own determination and something to believe in.

Director Sean Penn spent close to ten years getting this movie made, and he treats the subject matter with delicate respect and yet at the same time, holds nothing back. We see McCandless’ parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden) fighting and obviously unhappy, we hear parts of the story narrated by his sister Carine (Jena Malone) including the letters he wrote to her, apparently unaware that there was a massive search underway for him, and we see him do things that most people would never dare attempt. It is because he kept a journal that we even know that McCandless actually rode a kayak through the Grand Canyon to get to Mexico, that he climbed rocks with no ropes, and that near the end, he faced a brown bear. Emile Hirsch did his OWN STUNTS for all of those scenes.

Penn chose some of the best actors in American film to help tell this story, including Catherine Keener as Jan, a free-spirited woman who, along with her boyfriend Rainey, picks up McCandless hitchhiking. She mentions Slab City to him and then when he shows up there, takes him in and tries to encourage him to at least contact his parents. Vince Vaughn gives a strong performance as Wayne Westerberg, the owner of the grain harvesting company who gives McCandless a job and becomes a close friend. I was also impressed by Hal Holbrook as “Franz” (his name is a pseudonym), the elderly man who tries to understand what McCandless is doing, but also tries to stop him from going to Alaska.

As we watch McCandless go on this journey, the viewer begins to feel hopeful, like maybe he really does know what he is doing, and can go to Alaska with nothing but rice, a gun, some ammo, and a native guide to wild plants. When he gets to Alaska and miraculously finds an abandoned VW bus with a stove and a bed in it (not a spoiler, the bus is on the cover of the book)-we start to think holy cow, this guy is actually going to do it, he’s going to live alone in the absolute middle of nowhere.

Unfortunately, it does not turn out that way. The end of the movie is heartwrenching and difficult to watch, and very sad. Not having had read the book, I did know that McCandless did not survive in Alaska, but I had no idea how he died, and it was shocking and upsetting to me. As a Mother, it hurt me to think of what his parents must have gone through when they were notified.

This is not an easy movie to watch, there’s no doubt about that. But despite the difficult subject matter, this movie is practically a study in the art of acting, of cinematography, of how to direct a movie. For the soundtrack, Penn asked Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder to perform and release solo recordings, his first ever. The song “Hard Sun” also features Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney. The movie comes as a single disc with no bonus features, and a two-disc edition with two documentaries on the making of the film. You all know how much I love bonus features, and these two documentaries did not disappoint. I say they make the purchase justifiable. It is also available on HD-DVD for you diehard HD lovers-if I hadn’t received a review copy, I would have likely purchased HD.

Buy it, rent it, but see it, for the acting, for the filmmaking, and for the story itself, a story of a young man who had a dream.

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