again, it seems, i have let too much time lapse between our chats. i am sorry. i care for you, my ducklings, i really do. life just gets in the way of me speaking with you regularly, which honestly is a pretty shabby excuse for laziness. i do have quite a few hours in the day that i could use to speak, but for some reason they're taken up with the very important pursuits of reading trashy mysteries i find on my library shelves and watching youtube videos about mermaids. i really wish i was making the mermaid thing up, by the way. i'm not. ahh, the life of a bored librarian. but let's turn our attention to something a wee bit more edifiying, shall we?
so, three weeks ago, part of my city burned down. the waldo canyon fire, in its incredible day of destruction, burned over three hundred homes in my neighborhood. i don't really have a lot to say about that- the media and local and state governments have done a really amazing job letting people know what's been going on in our neck of the woods. my husband, cat, room mate, and i were evacuated for five days- we weren't in any danger (the fire ended about a mile and a half from our house) but we needed to be out of the way of the firefighters and law enforcement people who were doing their very important jobs. i could go on and on about how much being evacuated stunk, and how i know that i will never ever ever again be able to live with my parents for longer than five days, and how one large cat vs. two small dogs equals total chaos, but it's not important. we're home and we're safe. there are a lot of people who can't say that, and i know or have met a good majority of them. not only do i live near the burn area, but i was a local librarian there for five years, and we're a pretty close community. hearts were broken, and now it's time to heal. i also would like this to be my heartfelt thank-you to the firefighters and law enforcement who took an absolutely horrible situation and made it better. things could have been so much worse, and i thank everybody involved from the bottom of my heart. you're heroes, you know.
also during this wonderful time, i made a rather unfortunate personal discovery. i had been trying to loose weight for my trip to new orleans (i am going for my thirtieth birthday. thirty! geez.) and started a diet where i wasn't eating many carbs. i have been struggling my whole life with intestinal issues, and pretty much thought that i would just have to live with em and that they weren't that bad. well, a side effect of not eating a lot of carbs is not eating a lot of wheat products. i started doing that, and within TWO DAYS i had no more stomach issues. no more symptoms. huh, i thought. so i looked up gluten intolerance on the interwebs, and i had nine out of ten of the symptoms. so no more gluten for me, i guess. i know that there's a test that you get that confirms celiac disease and such, but i'm not going to pay money to get it done. all i know is that i didn't feel good, i stopped eating gluten, and now i do feel good. that's all i need to know.
of course, this means a life change. i don't have a problem sticking to the diet, because i feel better. i do have a problem with being a foodie, as now i can't eat in nearly all the places i want to, and i have a baked goods issue that is as shameful as it is problematic. i am no baker, so making my own won't work for me. i have a bit of grief over no more italian restaurants (yes, the chains have gluten free menus. with salad on them. and gummy pasta with marinara. not what i want, i tells ya.), no more green chili and fried food at the fair, no more cinnamon rolls at the mall..... and the list goes on. but i feel like crap if i eat it now, and i can't believe i put up with that level of discomfort for that long. it's just a life change that is really hard, because i love food and experiencing new foods, and eating out with friends, and the having to be so careful is really quite a drag. sigh.
ok. that was not the same level of suck as the fire, i know. hose of us dealing closely with the fire are still in a bit of shock. someday, i'll be able to write about how much it breaks my heart, seeing my mountains blackened and charred, seeing rubble instead of homes on the hillsides, knowing families who have lost it all.... but the wound is still too fresh. so i'll mope instead about my dietary restrictions and be sad that a favorite part of my life isn't really available to me any more- it's a coping mechanism.
hopefully my next post will be a return to goofy, with maybe a side of gluten-free recipes thrown in for good measure. we'll see. i'm ready for happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment