Gluten fears

I'm constantly worried about what I'm going to eat. Becoming suddenly allergic to gluten about four years ago was a horrible surprise to me, followed by dairy allergies two years later (common allergy pairs).
I have coped pretty well with the changes but certain parts of my life have become a lot harder. Socializing has always revolved around food for me, with both friends and family. So take away the safe food element and I'm stranded on an island. No more pizza parties, no more fast food, and while restaurants are do-able, sometimes the risk is much greater than the reward.
When someone makes the simple gesture of preparing food for me to eat it makes me feel incredibly grateful, as if there is no greater gift. I am lucky enough to have such friends and family in my life.
Today, my boyfriend and I traveled to his parents place and I was so worried about the food because his mom asked me not to bring anything. Not bringing anything makes me feel out of control of my own health and wellbeing. It is extremely hard to trust people to make you food when one slip up could mean you are curled up in the fetal position for hours or nauseated for half of the next day with a swollen stomach and gas. But when someone does it right, the gratitude I feel is immeasurable. It is hard to convey the trust issue to people because they don't understand the sentiment that for me gluten and/or dairy = pain. Therefore food = pain. Food. Something we need to survive. Food. Think about it. Animals are pretty smart, they eat a berry or mushroom that gives them a tummy ache and they don't eat it again. I don't think we are that in tune with our bodies. But I remember one fateful day suddenly getting the cold sweats, running to the bathroom, wishing I could puke, trying and failing to make myself puke, hanging my head over the grungy toilet in a filthy Hobby Lobby bathroom. Then pulling myself together and making it out to my car where I sobbed, humiliated and distraught. All because someone was careless at the restaurant I ate lunch at (even after asking about both gluten and dairy). I don't know if I will ever eat at that place again. No trust. That bridge is beyond burned, it was nuclear bombed. The worst part was, I was two hours from home, so I couldn't just run back to the house and curl up in bed and groan until it went away. I obviously survived and I'm ok, but I am scarred by that and will remember it for a long time.
Sometimes the trust is broken in a different way, when I am putting my wellbeing in someone else's hands and they offer me something that I can't have. I'm like, "uhhh, am I safe to eat here or were you just being polite because everyone is having chocolate cake without me?"
One of the best ways I cope is just to make some really awesome gluten free, dairy free foods myself. Or run by a natural grocery store and splurge on some goodies for myself. 
Today we traveled to my boyfriend's parents house for Thanksgiving. And sitting there on the counter with a friendly little label was a gluten free, dairy free pumpkin pie. Trust. Bridge rebuilt.

Free Time

I wonder... can I play the guitar while I sew? and bake creative treats? and vacuum the floor? and drink a beer? and listen to books on tape? and wash dishes? and pack for a camping trip? and string beads on fishing line? I've got too many things to do in my free time.

resisting yet again...

A wise yoga instructor once said that we grip the Earth and long to stay in the known, when it is the unknown we should be moving towards.

On March 11, 2011 Japan experienced a magnitude 8.9 earthquake, causing countless damage, and tremendous tsunami damage. We build on the precipe of chaos. On the edge of the water front. Straddling fault lines. Setting our foundations in river floodplains and hurricane zones. Do we crave chaos? Will we ever outlast mother nature and all her fury?

But like tiny ants, when our homes are destroyed, we build again, and again, and again.

Megan's life rule of the day: any dish that takes longer to wash than brushing your teeth is not worth owning.

quote

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Winston Churchill

short showers

If the average male in the U.S. is about 5' 10" and the average woman is around 5' 4", why are all the showerheads I've encountered like 5' 5"? Tall people don't shower?

Dear Health Ins Provider, left with no other weapon than my 2011 benefits magazine, I slaughtered 50 flies. Please send a new one as it is covered in fly blood.

Its amazing how I don't look like crazy mop head when I shower in the morning vs. sleeping on it wet.

tgi...freak its only Thursday

I was getting excited about making my Halloween costume between now and next weekend and got ahead of myself. Shit Sophia, its only Thursday.

cell phone

Today I went to work without my cell phone. Thank goodness I recently bought a watch or I'd be completely lost. It feels as if something is missing, though, that annoying ring tone that always interrupts my train of thought. It's like all the sudden the train is driving in the dark with the lights off. Ack! Silly little electronic gadget, it is comforting to know I can get along without you, but I still feel so out of touch.

pass

How is it, with each password we memorize, we inadvertently confuse ourselves? Maybe writing our passwords down in a location and making it easier for someone to obtain control. Memorizing series of numbers, phrases, alphanumeric characters, do you know any other species that participates in life in such a coded way? I find myself forgeting more important things like, how old I am, when the World Cup of Soccer is, how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop, and the list goes on. I'm going to have to resort to a computer generated list of passwords, which unfortunately a computer could probably crack. Pretty soon I'll be speaking in passwords, not knowing what they are for, lost in a dialect of &'s and $'s and capital Q's. What's in a memory?  #*@% if I know.

weird sounds

I'm on a week-long training, staying in a hotel, trying not to stay out too late with the new young awesome career interns I work with. As I relax in my hotel room, I must wonder what could possibly be banging on the wall if the headboards are screwed into the wall??? hmmm.....

"The most powerful secret weapon is the human soul on fire."  -Ana Brett

Megan heard the word manure (pronounced "manur") WAY too many times the last couple days.... manur, manur, manur, manur...

I'm angry at paper wasting

Reading for training: 1,086 pages

2 full reams of paper , 1 ream = 500 sheets

3 people printing: 6.515 reams of paper

40% of one whole tree

Paperless Act from the government please?

I printed 1-97, double sided

But thought this was too much and decided to print only what was needed

One trainee forgot his, so he prints it again, this time single-sided
Plus 19 versions of a ten page test (which I can print in 3 pages)

Paper that will be read in two weeks

And trashed in the next

Makes me sick

Angry

I want to puke

I'll read mine on PDF please

Oh won't somebody help me save the trees?

the office

Work was slightly like the show "the Office" today. Season five, Episode twenty-something. In the show, Michael quits his job as head of Dunder Mifflin and starts Michael Scott Paper Co., ironically in Dunder Mifflin's basement. The three workers are confined to a small space and are talking about each other on the phone, even though everyone is within earshot of each other. It is quite comical. In my office, there are now three of us working in a small space and I was reminded of "the Office" episode when my co-worker Jeremy started whispering into his cell-phone, three feet away from me. I smiled.

Good things come to those who wait. Seriously.

wind

On a normal spring day, one might hear chirping robins, feel the warm sun and a cool breeze, experience afternoon rainshowers, or even the occasional snow. Crocuses and tulips might be blooming, little calves are born, spring chickens, what have you.

 

Wyoming is not typical. And an atypical spring day for Wyoming, might be a weather extreme.

 

One a spring day in Wyoming, we began with dark skies, rain and snow mixed and a fairly strong breeze. In Wyoming you can't use the plants on the side of the road as a windsock, because they've evolved to stay still until the wind is really ripping, at least 45 miles an hour. Last Tuesday, it was probably blowing at 60 mph by the middle of the day. And when you are driving into the wind at 65 mph, you have to wonder if you are creeping along at 5 mph an if you will ever get home. This particular day, I was glad I wore small-ish earings, with a hardy hook and little rubber stoppers on the backs to keep them from being snatched away by the wind or stabbing you in the jugular. On a day like this, you want to wear a snug beanie hat, nothing with a brim. One's hair (if you are so lucky to have any) becomes a tangled mess in the wind, coated with dust and matted like a river rat. Dreadlocks wouldn't be so bad.

 

This week, May 12th, it snowed about 8 inches in Rawlins, and I thought to myself, this wouldn't be half-bad if there was a ski area nearby. But, back to the grind, May 13th is in the 40s, the snow is melting, and its looking a lot more like spring.

Family

A world of families, divided and subdivided by unions and divisions, and reunited again. A swirling chaotic, loving family, picking each other up when we're broken and fusing the shards together like stained glass. Family from far, family from near, family unknown did appear. The satellites are up, rebuilding the connection, and I'm awed, facinated, relieved, and at peace. I enjoyed the display of washed-out 80's hair-band rockers in their leather and thinning hair this weekend. Its no picnic to convene for a death, but from death new appreciation for life is born.

roadkill

It must be roadkill season here in Wyoming. The rabbits and pronghorn who dare to run and migrate have a high chance of becoming a splattered hunk of crow and eagle food. The grass might be greener on the other side, if you make it there!