Month: July 2025

July 17, 2025 – Eat Like You Give a Fork: The Real Dish on Eating to Thrive

July 17, 2025 /

Here we go again. This book by Mareya Ibrahim is the Left Coast Culinary Book Club selection for July. It is part cookbook and part guide book for clean eating. I don’t know all of the specifics but we now have a member that has dietary allergies. This is kind of unfortunate for the club but we are working our way around it by now labelling all of our dishes with an ingredient list.

When it comes to cookbooks, I don’t really read them word for word. I do scan every recipes and I will read any sort of ancillary comments or recipe introduction. This book is really half text and half cookbook. A lot of it is a justification or overview of the section. More on that in a minute.

This book is a conundrum for me. Part of it I absolutely agree with and part of it I absolutely disagree with. But, let’s save the overall judgement to the end. Ibrahim’s reasoning for clean eating I absolutely agree with. The basic premise is our American’s diet is garbage. Like any other detox, you have to break your association of activity to result. She suggests a two week training course to re-adjust your taste buds. She talks about how kids need to try new things a number of times to get accustomed to the food. This is the first section.

I have no issue with that. I do feel strongly that our diet is a choice. Many of us are lazy more than we should be. Lazy becomes habit forming and pretty soon we have health problems. Ibrahim’s suggestion is that every plate should be 50% non-starchy carbohydrates. I have no issue with that either, it seems pretty smart.

When you start to re-introduce starches, she goes into a lot about good and bad grains. I certainly understand that people with gluten sensitivity absolutely need to stay away from gluten. The research that I have done into paleo says to me that it is not the grain per se that is the problem, but the glycemic conversion of sugar to energy that is actually the problem. It is that conversion reaction that causes inflammation and inflammation is the root to many of our modern health problem.

The next subject that the book talks about is protein. Guess which way it went? You guessed it, fish and white meat chicken. Red meat is highly recommended to eat very sparingly. I can certainly say that I disagree with this recommendation. Fish, chicken and red meat are all good sources of protein. This is especially true when you are not combining fat and inflammation at the same time.

Since I brought up fat, I certainly side with Ibrahim on eliminating trans fats. In my book there are two types of fats that are good. One is pressed from something like olive oil and the other is from animals. I can in no way endorse grape seed oil or any oil that is the result of distillation.

What I will say as a positive for the book is that if you followed it, I am confident that it is an infinitesimal improvement over the typical American diet. I think my concerns over the book is I cannot fully endorse the science or lack thereof. This is a huge problem in the health and nutritional field. It is so convoluted with industrial food, pharmaceuticals, politics and money that it is almost impossible to find truth.

My real worry is that people already ignorant of how to use logic to assess truth from fiction come out of this reading half baked. One other thing that bothered me about this book was that the language was pretty chippy, it is even in the subtitle. Just like all the crap on YouTube/Facebook/Tick-tok that is entertaining more than educational. There is an old saying that ignorance is dangerous.

End Your Programming Routine: Maybe I was a little harsh on the book? It’s not bad, it’s just not great. I wouldn’t give it as a gift to someone else but if you wanted to start somewhere why not here? This is why I started where I did today because I could strongly agree and disagree with parts of the book. The first place to start is actually starting and this book can help with that.

July 16, 2025 – Made in India?

July 16, 2025 /

This is one of the most serendipitous events that I have ever encountered. My wife recently asked for relish to put on hot dogs. I really don’t care for relish much. Years ago, I made zucchini relish and I thought that was pretty good, but that is long gone. When I went to the store, I deliberately sought out something different that what normally is purchased in a squeeze bottle.

I picked out this Wickles brand in a specialty area of the store. I actually thought that it was pretty good, very close to my zucchini relish. The fourth of July came around and we had a few hotdogs but we also had a ton of buns left over. So, I have been eating a bunch of hotdogs lately that include this relish on it.

Now for the serendipitous part. A few days ago I saw an article on MSN that I had to read. It was something along the lines of ‘The most famous food brand of each state’ I am a sucker for these kinds of articles because I am always interested in what a likely non-resident thinks of my state and other states that I am familiar with such as South Carolina.

Most of the time, I can pretty much guess what the choice is for Oregon. I will get to that in a minute. But, it just so happens that Wickles is the most famous brand in Alabama. Before I purchased this jar, I had never heard of or seen Wickles before let alone ever read the label.

The other night, I was eating a couple hotdogs and thinking about this article. I couldn’t remember the state and so I flipped the jar around to look at the label. Low and behold it said Made in India on it. What? I cannot think about the last time I saw Made in India on it. Even more than that, why relish?

As I went through the the article, I guessed correctly that Oregon’s most famous brand is Tillamook cheese. If you are not familiar with the brand, it is pretty good cheddar cheese. We of course grew up with it but it has gotten pretty big in the last twenty years. I remember seeing it in one grocery store for the first time when we lived in South Carolina, it was a big deal for us. There was a time when my wife’s family sent us a care package. It contained some Tillamook cheese and some wine and a few other things. It was in an insulated box but it was warm outside and I remember the cheese being soft. It was still good though.

Tillamook is a town on the Oregon Coast and the cheese is a farmer owned coop. It was traditionally made in a factory along the coast. But, about 25 years ago, they built a second plant along the Columbia river gorge. It doesn’t even have a visible sign on it. But, it is that plant that produces about 75% of the overall volume. In fact, there was even a lawsuit over this “It claims the creamery’s marketing led consumers to believe its milk is sourced from small, family-owned, lush-green pasture-based dairies in Tillamook County, when in reality, the case alleges, it sources two-thirds of its milk from one of the country’s largest dairies with cement floors and barren feedlots and over 28,000 cows east of the Cascades near Boardman.”

Without that plant, there would have never been Tillamook cheese in South Carolina grocery stores. Now that I am back in Oregon, I could really care less if Tillamook has distribution on the east coast. It is however quite the double edged sword. Are you willing to let your small, hometown favorites compete against the likes of one of the seven large food companies? And if they can’t compete, eventually they become acquired. This happens over and over.

End Your Programming Routine: I know a lot about the food industry, most of which doesn’t impress me very much. I cannot say why relish is made in India. That being said, it probably has to do with product cost and distribution. They are clearly very small, they have 82 followers on LinkedIn. There is a separate LinkedIn page for Wickles that has 125 followers. I mean, I have more than that without too much effort at all.

July 15, 2025 – Summer Projects 2

July 15, 2025 /

I had a great idea for my wife’s 50th birthday. It has taken 32 years for her to warm up a tiny bit to firearms. I have never been involved in any crimes and nobody has gotten injured when I am around. She has finally come around to recreational shooting can be a lot of fun. I thought that I would buy her a really nice looking 22 rifle. That is until she wanted to redo the bathroom to the tune of $2000 for her birthday. How can I deny that?

The bathroom wasn’t exactly the bathroom. It also included replacing all of the light fixtures in our bedroom. We had a free day during the weekend of the fourth, that is hard to believe so I took on the task of replacing the fixtures.

I really didn’t want to do it, my hand and arm are still hurting quite a bit. The fixtures we replaced a week earlier, I tried to instruct my son and wife on how to do the job. I am sad to say that he ran off saying that it was impossible and I ended up doing at least half of the job. I decided that I didn’t need the aggravation of trying to get help. It was more pain than my arm.

I definitely won’t argue that the the old fixtures were dated. They were stamped 1999 and they had a Victorian brass look. They had already been updated once by replacing the globes from Victorian flowers to clear. Despite the fact that these new fixtures do look updated, every single one we have replaced has been a downgrade in light the fixtures put out.

My son’s fan went from four full sized lightbulbs to two small base bulbs. The sconces in the living room went from clear glass to shaded. An now the fixtures in our bedroom went from full size bulbs to small base bulbs. I guess that this is the only thing that bothers me is that fixtures are purchased by how they look and not by what they do. But, if this is the only problem then I will just put up with it.

At least a victory I can celebrate is that my wife agreed with me that it would be best to wait until the winter season to do the dry wall finishing from the rot repair and new window that was installed. I think that it is prudent not to spend a bunch of time repairing when I am not 100% confident that the leak is resolved.

I don’t know that I would call this a project but I recently purchased new wheels and tires for my pickup. I have needed new tires for quite a while. The problem was that the wheels were chrome coated and the chrome is what seals the inside of the tire. Over the years, that chrome has started to crack and therefore leak. It is very slow no doubt, about it but it causes the tires to be run on low pressure and wear the tires out prematurely.

I have had the local tire shop seal the inside of the wheel but they said that they have done all they can do. It is not an expense that I really wanted to make but this old pickup deserves some love. I have done very little in the 22 years I have owned it and things are starting to wear out. Now that my son will be gone in the fall, I plan on taking it out hunting this year as well. That is not to mention that I am also going to need it when I go get dirt for my fall season platers.

End Your Programming Routine: With summer ticking by at a breakneck pace, it is time to be buttoning things up as much as possible. There is still plenty to do for sure but if I gauge my progress I think that I am on track to get everything done. That is good because checking things off of my list makes me happy.

July 14, 2025 – The Advanced Placement Lie

July 14, 2025 /

End your programming means that we have to start questioning and evaluating some of the most hallowed status quo. That means that institutions such as the local school district or education first groups like Advanced Placement have more in mind than college credit. There is an extremely effective message on overselling the value of participation. Don’t get me wrong, they do what they claim, but it certainly matters what the definition of is, is if you get my drift.

July 11, 2025 – Boundaries, Chapter 5-6

July 11, 2025 /

These are the last two chapters of part one. I am going to spend most of this post talking about chapter five rather than six, for reasons that I will explain when we get there. The author’s rightly claim that to be successful in any endeavor, you must know ‘the rules’ of the game. Chapter five is all about the ten rules of boundaries.

I will quickly list the ten rules below.

  1. Sowing and reaping
  2. Responsibility
  3. Power
  4. Respect
  5. Motivation
  6. Evaluation
  7. Proactivity
  8. Envy
  9. Activity
  10. Exposure

I don’t really feel like duplicating the work already printed in this chapter. It is redundant and I am not any sort of expert in the topic. In case you are not reading the book, it is probably worth putting some definition on each of these rules. It also helps me remember in two or three years what this book was all about. I do that sometimes.

  • Sowing and reaping – This is pretty evident what it means. The one thing that struck me as unique is that sometimes people do not reap what they sow because someone else does it instead, see responsibility below.
  • Responsibility – We cannot have successful boundaries if we do not take responsibility for our actions. A classic failure is the idea of codependency.
  • Power – Just like the 12 steps idea, we have to acknowledge that there are some things that are completely within out control. By the same token, there are issues that entirely out of our hands.
  • Respect – I think that this is two fold. The first is that we won’t get respect if we do not give respect. Similarly, we have to trust that others will respect boundaries if given meaning that if we don’t state our boundaries, some people may realize that there is a boundary.
  • Motivation – We have to have desire to set boundaries. Usually that lack of desire is a result of fear of action like it will hurt someone else or make them angry. Our motivation has to be independent of what we thing the actions of others will result.
  • Evaluation – This law is more about the how and when to express boundaries. It is true that setting down the line can cause hurt feelings but what are the repercussions of not doing it? Sensitive subjects demand sensitive conversations.
  • Proactivity – State your boundaries up front. I do think that the trick is to perform the proper Evaluation before blurting something out that is out of context.
  • Envy – The best way that I can describe this is that it is the opposite of what we want. We need to be aware of our own hang-ups to be able to effectively communicate what we do want.
  • Activity – If I understand this correctly, this law is intended to keep moving forward. After you state your intentions, you have to follow through with enforcing the boundaries as well as staying in relationship.
  • Exposure – Clearly, values and boundaries have to be known.

I think that the part that kind of bothers me about these laws are they are not clearly distinct. For instance, Proactivity, Activity and Exposure are closely related. Sowing and Reaping along with Responsibility are closely related. Envy seems like an anti-law. I will be honest, I think that this would have way impact if the laws were tidied up quite a bit. I cannot clearly say a particular scenario fits one law or the other.

Moving on to chapter six. I suppose that maybe this chapter was necessary. It is about the hang-ups for having boundaries. I kind of found it a weak, whine fest which is why I chose to not spend much time on the chapter. This is the list from the book.

  1. Boundaries are selfish
  2. Boundaries are disobedient
  3. Boundaries others will hurt me
  4. Boundaries hurt others
  5. Boundaries mean that I am angry
  6. Boundaries injure me
  7. Boundaries cause guilt
  8. Boundaries burn bridges

End Your Programming Routine: I had read to this point when I started writing about this book a few weeks ago. It probably explains my kind of sour start. Some of the earlier chapters I felt relatively insightful. Unfortunately, these two feel bloated and need refining. I suppose the alternative is that I am just not getting it, I guess that you can be the judge of that.

July 10, 2025 – A New Knife in the Kitchen

July 10, 2025 /

Happy Anniversary to me. My wife recently purchased 7″ Santoku by Cutco as a gift and I have been using it quite a bit. I will be honest, it wasn’t exactly on my list. I have been looking for a new kitchen knife, but I was really interested in a carbon steel blade. The reason being is that I wanted a blade that would be easy to sharpen at home.

This Cutco knife is stainless steel and guaranteed for life. They have a lifetime sharpening plan but that supposes that you ship it back to New York. I will more than likely try it at some point in my life but have not had a knife to try.

I am no stranger to the Cutco brand. We have some steak knives and we have some kitchen utensils but nothing that benefits from razor sharpness like kitchen knives. They are definitely high quality and I believe that they will last for a lifetime. No disrespect intended on the brand and I will have years to see if it worth the hype.

When we got married, we got some department, gift store certificates. One on those we spent on a set of knives. They happened to be J. A. Henkel International brand. They are high quality but a step down from the flagship line (not International). They have been good knives and my only problem is that the steel is very hard.

I have spent hours sharpening knives. It is often something I will do in front of a football game or something like that. I can get the knives to a point where they will slice through the sponge when washing if you are not careful. But, it definitely came at a cost of effort. Hence why I was looking for an easier to sharpen knife.

If I knew then what I know now, I am a believer in one quality knife. Ninety-five percent of what I do in the kitchen involves the 8″ chef’s knife. The other knives in my drawer have niche roles. There is one that I pretty much exclusively use for cheese, there is a boning knife that I find doesn’t work that well. The paring knife gets some intricate work, but very little. The only knife I focus on keeping sharp is the chef’s knife.

My first use of this knife came as soon as my wife presented it to me. She got it at Costco and I needed to re-package some pork chops. I slid the tip across the plastic wrap and not only did it cut the plastic but also scored the meat as well. Yes, this thing was sharp out of the box. I was dreaming up dishes that I could put the knife to the test.

The first night, I made some Asian chicken, lettuce wraps. It wasn’t a huge test but it was something. The next night I was planning to make some red Thai curry, now we are talking. After a couple of weeks using it now, I can say that it slices like a house of fire. I think that due to the blade design, the tip is hard to ‘get in there’.

The other thing that I have noticed is that I do a lot of dicing with chef’s knife. I hate to do dishes and so I will take three times longer with the knife than to dirty some other kitchen too. The design of the santoku knife doesn’t have a lot curvature to it. This doesn’t make dicing as easy because that motion is a rocking of the blade.

The biggest culprit for dulling knives is there handling while cleaning. I have to be on guard for sticking in the dishwasher and jamming in the metal drying rack. Once blades get nicked, it takes a lot of sharpening to fix that. That is why I am kind of a Nazi about their handling. Everybody in the house knows it but they don’t spend the hours with the consequences.

End Your Programming Routine: This is my first Japanese style blade. It is a good knife for sure but I am not sure it is the panacea that I was looking for. On slicing heavy meals like a stir fry, I think that it will be a go to. On a dicing heavy meal like tacos, I think that I will stick with the chef’s knife. It is probably a push for balanced prep. Funny as it may seem, this new knife has kind of reignited kitchen creativity. I look forward to more testing.

July 9, 2025 – Check One Thing Off the List

July 9, 2025 /

You can see the finished product of the rot repair and the window installation. What I see is a little bit of painting that needs to be done. The unfortunate part is that all three colors need to be painted and I have pretty much used all of the gray. That means a trip to Sherwin Williams to get some more paint. This would be the first time I have had to buy that color since we have painted our house about ten years ago (Wow, I cant believe it has been that long).

I can no longer call myself a paint insider since it has been over twenty years since I have worked in the industry. At one time, I used to know all of the movers and shakers in the industry. I might have even known too much about it. This is not a nation wide endorsement, but I prefer Sherwin Williams because I knew the head chemist and I knew that they had a Pacific Northwest test facility.

There were also some local companies making paint. But, like I said I knew all the movers and shakers which means I knew the strengths and weaknesses. Clearly locals were going to have some sort of local testing, but we have specific performance needs in the Pacific Northwest. The same would be true in the desert southwest or the Midwest or anywhere else for that matter.

That is a long way of saying that I believe in paint that has local test facilities, not all brands do. What these test facilities do is generate long term data with formulations. We are concerned with bleaching and mildew resistance. Generally speaking, price is an indicator of quality. Quality is defined by longevity, ease of application and coverage ability. I will talk about that a little bit.

Longevity to me is first will the paint stay on the substrate once it is down. Some of the problems I have seen are thing like alligatoring where the paint flakes off over time. There is also chalking, where the surface becomes chalky causing adherence problems and is more of an oil based problem. Yellowing or fading has to do with the composition of the paint.

What I mean by ease of application is more about prep than actually painting. A line like Super Paint from Sherwin Williams is a primer and paint combined. This eliminates the requirements to prime first (at least on bare wood). But, also can it paint on oil based gloss or does that have to be sanded or removed. I really don’t advise this but I watched the painter paint over moss and mildew and it still looks good today (from a distance).

Coverage ability is not just how much square footage a gallon will go but also how many coats do you need. When painting our house, we did most of it in Super Paint because it is cheaper than the line up Resilience. But, that step up would allow complete one coat coverage. When they sprayed the house in dark blue, they didn’t bother with covering the trim because one roller coat of white was perfectly fine. You pay for that because Resilience is 50% more expensive than Super Paint.

I know, this kind of sounds like a Sherwin Williams commercial. I have confidence that there are some other brands out there that perform just as well, this is what I am familiar and comfortable with. I would highly advise buying your paint from a paint store and not a box store. While the prices might be similar at each, the products are not. You are just going to get a better product at a paint store for similar money. And this stuff is not cheap. One gallon of Super Paint at list price is $85.

Since I painted my house with Super Paint and the work was new, I simply painted. No other prep was involved. That was a major labor saver.

End Your Programming Routine: I got the painting done in about four hours, all three colors and I even painted over some of the ten year old sections to make sure the color stayed even. I have painted a lot of houses over the years. I really wouldn’t want it as a career, but there can definitely be some zen in it. Unlike most building materials, paint is one thing that has improved over the years. And, it always feels good to check something off the list.

July 8, 2025 – Visible Evolution

July 8, 2025 /

We are now on our third Ecovac Deebot (see picture below). These things are not cheap but given how much our dog sheds hair, it saves from having to vacuum more frequently. Our model also mops, but after testing the use once we have never actually used the feature. Part of that is because switching between the two requires manual intervention. Given that it adds to the price tag, I am not sure why we keep getting the feature that we don’t use.

Probably about six years or so ago, we bought the first model. It lasted probably two or three years. In fact, we even sent it back to be rebuilt because it lost it’s way around the house. It did work, but shortly we found out that the dog hair was clogging the discharge. Consequently, every day I would manually empty the dust pan. It also had a propensity to lose its map and so every few weeks we would have to remap the house.

When it stopped working the second time, my wife decided to replace it with a newer model. I was very thankful that I no longer had to remember to empty the dust bin. This second generation seemed to remember it’s map so that was also a win. It was also more robust than the first one. I wouldn’t get stuck on carpets as an example. But is was also a brute. There have been several mornings I found it wedged (and stuck) under the toe kick.

So, while the second generation was significantly less likely to be stuck, probably several times a week I would find it stopped in the middle of the room. These things are not without maintenance. The first thing I would do is try to determine if something that wasn’t supposed to be wrapped up in the brushes. After that I would check to see if there was hair wrapped around the main spindle causing heat and friction. Inevitably, the battery would be dead. I never could quite tell if it died in place or kept trying to work which killed the battery.

For some reason, my wife decided to replace unit two. She said that she didn’t think it was working very well. I don’t know, I didn’t notice anything unusual. She installed unit three about two weeks ago. So far so good. This one must have a bigger motor because I feel like it uses the battery much quicker. However, the thing this one does is actually go back to the base station to charge. It will then pickup where it left off.

It hasn’t run long enough to notice any quirks. My wife is a big fan of the Ruggable product which is an area rug that is two pieces. There is a backing and there is the washable rug. These vacuums have a propensity to suck up the top layer. Most of the time it goes right over it, but then there are other times where it actually gets wrapped up in the robot. I am not sure that is the robot’s fault but every morning we have to flip corners back onto the velcro backing.

There must be a lot of feedback that goes back to the manufacturer. I am amazed at how quickly these things have become better in a short period of time. I count 64 models on their website and they are not the only people making such products. I know that I am certainly jaded, that comes from years and years of seeing inferior products continue to be inferior. I couldn’t believe that our second generation actually would empty the dust bin, that seemed like such a win.

End Your Programming Routine: If something happens to my wife, I will more than likely let the Deebot go. In my opinion, it is a maintenance hassle as well as a consumables are costly. You trade your time for the task in troubleshooting and keeping the robot running. It also is not a substitute for a manual sweeping or vacuuming. Things block the robot from doing a complete job. But with pets indoors, it does a pretty good job of knocking most of the hair down and it stays on top of it.

July 7, 2025 – Do Or Die

July 7, 2025 /

The origin of this podcast came from me needing to get my notes put together for a podcast. I thought it would be cute to carry the theme through the rest of the podcast. That means that I am talking about projects and initiatives that I have in the pipeline. You might be surprised at my conclusion or my take on it at least.

July 3, 2025 – Boundaries, Chapters 3-4

July 3, 2025 /

Last week I wrote about what it means to not have boundaries. I think that we can all imagine such things. As promised, this week I am getting more technical with the types of personalities define boundary issues. And then in chapter 4, it talks about how boundaries are defined and recognize as us individuals.

At some point, we all have boundary issues. Maybe you are not the aggressor but the one aggressed upon. Only one of those situations do we have any sort of control which is why we all have boundary issues. Depending on your personality type is how you default to boundary situations.

Chapter Three is titled “What are boundaries”. There are essentially four different types of boundary definitions. Here they are.

  • Compliant – Feels guilty and/or controlled by others.  Can’t set boundaries.
  • Avoidants – Sets boundaries against getting help from others.
  • Controllers – Aggressively or manipulatively violates boundaries against others.
  • Non Responsive – Sets boundaries against the responsibility to love.

In the book, these types are placed in a table. The Compliants can’t say no and the Non-Responsives can’t say yes. The Avoidants can’t hear no while the Controllers cannot hear yes. When you look at the four types, do you see yourself? I sure do, Much like the Myers-Briggs tests and other such personality tests, I don’t necessarily find myself squarely one category all of the time.

Ironically, I can see myself with all of them from time to time. In my marriage, I am almost completely Compliant. In my non-working time outside of my marriage, I am almost completely Avoidant. While I am at work I am a combination of Controller and Non-Responsive. I can think of times that I have knowingly ignored subordinates requests to try and grow at the expense of trying. But, that has been rare and far and few between.

I don’t think that I am an alien or something not human. I am not sure that it is normal to have all four traits but I also don’t think it is abnormal to have different responses in different situations. It probably is a good indication of why I am always striving to be fiercely independent and self-reliant. It probably explains why I have issues ‘fitting in’.

That being said, my dichotomy speaks to the two types of boundaries, functional versus relational. Functional boundaries are things related to task completion whereas relational has to do with people. I won’t lie, I do think that my functional boundaries are stronger than my relational. I don’t have as much of an issue standing up for myself in a work situation because I feel like I have less to lose.

Chapter four is titled “How boundaries are developed”. This is an very interesting chapter in that it describes the necessary states to not only grow up but also to develop healthy boundaries. When boundary problems develop, it is often a trauma or stunting at a particular stage. Examples of those causes from the book are things like withdrawal from boundaries, hostility against boundaries, overcontrol, lack of limits, inconsistent limits, trauma

There are five developmental stages that have purpose. They are:

  • Bonding (birth) – mother and child bond
  • Separation (6 mos – toddler) – recognizing that independence is necessary
  • Hatching (child) – developing independent personality
  • Reproachment (child) – establishing boundaries with safe limits
  • Practicing (pre-teen to teen) – Acting within boundaries with ever increasing control

I look at this list and I can see exactly where my development diminished. Since it is biological, bonding and separation happen. I think that my development slowed in Hatching and severely stunted in Reproachment. This seems to be an extremely common occurrence with strict parenting. When a child is not allowed to safely say no then they do not develop the skills to set personal boundaries.

Clearly, not everything remains static. My sister (youngest) had much less in the terms strict boundaries than I did. My brother rebelled and had much more friction. His personality was stronger in determination to become independent whereas my sister really did not have to try that hard.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not complaining, it is just the way it is. And it certainly is not an excuse to not address the problem. This book has already changed my perspective on boundaries. I now realize that I have issues as well rather than strictly thinking I am the victim.