Happy Labor FREE Day!

It is a day of catching up with family, of catching up on correspondence, a day of mini-feasting and trying to minimize the yeasties. They grew to over-abundance over the feast time of wedding prep, parties, and gorging on sugary desserts.

Oh, those yeasty-beasties! They force my feet to walk me into the pantry and stand right in front of the chocolate. Silly me, I bought the chocolate, thinking it would just sit there until I wanted to bring a platter of late summer berries surrounded by squares of it to a Labor Day Celebration at our daughter's house. "Hah!" It says. "Hah! Just try to ignore me."

I can't. I keep feeding the yeasty-beasties. They're happy. My joints are not. Even my head hurts. I don't have the dessert I'd planned to take to the Labor Day Feast. Yeasties have got to go.

Up the probiotics, I read. Eat fermented vegetables, I hear. Forget about sugary yogurts. The sugar content cancels out any good the cultures of acidophilus might have provided.

If I've taken any antibiotics in the last two years, they say, my system needs to be rebalanced with really good probiotics. I have taken Ciproflaxin. So, what's a really good one? Maybe Natrum? Surely something in a glass bottle. Probably not my fall back Trader Joe's extra super-duper brand in plastic bottles. Thirty-billion live cultures and ten to fifteen different strains, they say. (The ones saying this, of course, are the manufacturers of the super-duper best-in-the-world-Perfect Biotics!) Whom can we believe? Whom can we trust?

Your skin will clear up and  you'll look radiantly alive, they say. Your depression will lift, your headaches will cease, you'll become regular as clockwork, and all your clothes will fit and be sunshine bright! That's what they say. (Well, maybe not about the clothes.)

I'll settle for more walking, less chocolate (not ban it completely, of course), more sauerkraut and a "good-enough" probiotic.

 I'll let you know how I fare. Is that fair?

Meanwhile, enjoy your labor-free-day to the max!
(Unless you're pregnant or a baby ready to be born, and this is your day!
In which case, Happy Labor Day and may you enjoy a perfect coming-out party!)

Now, pass the chocolate, and no one gets hurt.