Maddog Mama
It’s not often that I find my spam mail to be prophetic, but hey—stranger things have certainly happened.
This morning amidst the advertisements for mortgages, diet pills, bodily enhancements, and RILLY RILLY REAL ROLEXES, GINA!, I received this gem of a subject line:
Oh, you are not able to control your feelings!
I think we all know what the email was really about (ummm… donuts?), but after today it made me laugh. read more…
Love is living with longing
Dear Gluten,
I miss you. Although I try to soldier on without you, with each passing day I feel your absence ever more keenly. There is a hole in my life I am left trying to fill. Try though I might to find your equal, the reality is that you are unique and irreplaceable.
Please come back before I cook again. read more…
Between these weeds, flowers grow
I think I may need to stop reading blogs for a while. And stop watching the news. And stop talking to anyone. Mmmkay? I’ll be here in my cave if you need me, but only if you have something nice to say.
The world is a stupid, scary place these days. I feel guilty for having brought more people into it.
Which is why I am going to purposefully ignore any of the myriad happenings I’d really LIKE to point to and say, “Oh! Look! Crazy people!” and instead tell you about how your daughters may, in fact, be lovely, but I got the very best one even though she often goes deep undercover as the world’s most difficult child. read more…
Buy high, sell low
I know you’ll all be really relieved to know that I’ve finally rolled over my 401k into my IRA. It’s exciting news and I don’t blame you for being riveted. (Hey, I even went poking around in my archives to see if I’d mentioned this before, and how far back it was. The bad news for you is that I found it, and really, OKAY, you get it, I’ve talked about my long lost 401k before, WHO CARES; but the good news is that that post also contains one of the greatest Monkey quotes EVER, so there’s that.)
The check came and I called Big Financial Institution (henceforth referred to as BFI) to make sure I knew how to send it in. (Me: I have this check to send in. Them: Uh, okay, send it in. Me: Oh. Um. Alright then.) I don’t want to brag or anything, but with the deposit of this check, the value of my IRA increases by a factor of 30. I’m RICH. Or I just averaged a contribution of about a buck a year when it comes to the IRA. Hard to say, really. read more…
Test (edited)
Just testing out AntiLeech, folks. I’ll take this post down in a bit.
Edited to add: Okay, I’m leaving it up. Bitacle is still siphoning my content and AntiLeech doesn’t appear to be working properly. Whether that’s because I set it up wrong or bitacle is getting around it, I’m not certain. Back to the drawing board.
Housekeeping
First off, for those of you reading via RSS, I apologize for the weird things that are happening with my feed these last few days. HELLO, PEOPLE READING AT BITACLE.ORG! SAY HELLO TO THE NICE BITACLE PEOPLE AND BE SURE TO THANK THEM FOR STEALING MY CONTENT LIKE THE BOTTOM-FEEDERS THEY ARE! THEN GO VISIT STOPBITACLE.ORG! SMOOCHES!
So, yeah. I am still trying to figure out what to do about this. I had changed to full feed so that I could have a copyright notice appended to my posts, but then I thought “Why am I giving these asshats my entire posts when I could, at the least, limit them to just the first few sentences?” I’m back to summary feeds, at least for now.
Anyway. So there’s that. read more…
Sleepover at my house
Oh! Hello! Didn’t I used to blog every day? I think I did. Of course, that was B.B. (Before Bed.) I may be too busy sleeping, now, or just lounging around like the lady of leisure I hope to become. I haven’t decided yet.
In any event, thank you to everyone with celiac or kids with celiac or who know someone with celiac who’ve contributed such kind and informative suggestions to my last few posts. Going gluten-free is challenging enough without the melodramatic “The sky is falling! We can’t have crackers! He’s going to starve!” schtick. (And REALLY, that’s just silly. Who was doing THAT? Oh. Right. It was me. Moving on….)
Yesterday I cased the Whole Foods section of my local grocery and found a few of the items y’all suggested as being palatable, and for a lot less than they cost at Ye Olde Healthe & Bankruptcee Shoppe. I’ve also acquired all manner of weird flours and am looking forward to some creative baking. Like Rachel, I remain convinced that adding enough sugar to my concoctions will eventually yield delicious results even without gluten. We shall see.
But enough of that, for now. Would you like to come over and hang out on my bed? read more…
“Ri-ice, and shi-ine, and give God your gluten, gluten. . . “
Oddly enough, listening to me sing that this morning did not make Monkey any more amenable to the delicious gluten-free organic brown rice and twigs cereal I set before him.
Which makes NO sense at all, because that is TOTALLY a catchy tune and should send people everywhere running for the organic grain-like food substitutes. Mmmmmm, wood pulp! It’s what’s for breakfast!
Yesterday I went to the health food store and spent some quality time with a lovely young vegan who did a very nice job of squelching her urge to visibly recoil when I listed pop-tarts and Froot Loops amongst Monkey’s favorite—but now forbidden— foods. I wish I could say I did the same when I picked up a box of cereal that cost $7.50. It was made with only the highest-quality grains and gold dust.
I walked out of there with a single bag of groceries. Which cost $36.
Monkey rejected this morning’s offering (well, he allowed me to force three spoonsful down his gullet, but complained the entire time) while Chickadee and I finished our bowls. Of course, she and I happen to know that anything tastes good with enough brown sugar and cream. Monkey still needs to be assimilated. And taught to appreciate my fine musical stylings.
Love is nourishing
Love is cooking when I’m too tired to eat, and figuring out how to make a yummy breading out of cornmeal (and then explaining that yes, it’s “breading,” but no, it doesn’t have gluten in it).
Love is being 35 and still playing with your (kids’) food.
Happy Love Thursday, everyone.
Inconclusive
I lucked out, this morning, and Monkey did NOT remember to ask me again. But as the comments rolled in on that post I found myself wanting to explain a few things to everyone, like that I know “the talk” is a whole bunch of talks, and that we’ve already discussed a lot of this stuff. Nor am I particularly squeamish. It’s just that Monkey is only 6, and a very YOUNG 6.
In fact, he’s the kind of 6 who sits in the Tae Kwon Studio with me while Chickadee’s in class and—apropos of nothing—announces, “Mama, I don’t remember being in your belly. OR coming out of your vagina!”
So perhaps that clarifies why I am not eager to get right into the actual mechanics of the, uh, buddying.
Anyway. read more…