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There are only a couple of days left in the year and I've only done thirty or so blog posts this year. I keep thinking maybe it's the end of the blogging road for me but I still have something to say that I haven't said yet. I'm not exactly sure what that is though. It's facebook. Too many one liners. There's nothing left to expound upon after so many of those. So I need to start bulking up the blog; and I need to get those singamajigs off the page. They were cute at first but rapidly grew annoying. I'll start with this video.* One of the funnest songs of the year. I've always liked hippies. Have occasionally wanted to be a hippy. I could never reach hippy status though because I'm too uptight, straightlaced and I insist on shaving everyday (legs get too itchy otherwise.) I miss my old hippyish next door neighbors. They brought balance to the place.
*Don't worry, this blog isn't going to turn into a showcase for youtube videos.

Peace, Love and Understanding

One of my favorite Christmas songs that isn't actually a Christmas song but should be, and a good version of it too.

Thanksgiving!

I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time. And it had been about five years since I last cooked a turkey. I'd like to thank all the people who offered up the Reynolds Cooking Bag suggestion (if I had a dollar for every time...) but I decided to to go with my mom's tried and true foil pan meets foil tent covering method. You can't really go wrong following mom's advice on Thanksgiving, right? And that green bean salad showed up long after I left home so I don't have to incorporate that. Okay, I think that was really my sister's contribution, but whatever. So we had Brent's dad and step mom Karen over and Brent's sister and her boyfriend and their little Gabby girl over. The kids loved playing with little Gabby. The girls love babies and toddlers. I happened to watch the Ellen show for about two minutes with Isabella a couple of days before and she was giving away Singamajigs. Cutest, funniest toys I've seen in a long time. Then I ran into them at Walmart the next day for $9 each so I used Gabby as an excuse to buy one. So the kids could play with it with her. Well it's a lot cheaper than having another baby of my own just so I can buy little kid toys again. If you haven't seen these things:



Mine is a little more ghetto looking than these and I think it's probably best to have a chorus of them, but one will have to suffice. Anyway, we all had a good time and the food turned out good I thought. All indications point to no food poisoning. Now I don't want to get rid of the extra table. I kind of like the table for ten sitting in the middle of the living room. But it's going to get pretty tight once the Christmas tree shows up. I think my table setting would have impressed the editors at Country Living magazine (except I had disposable dishes, I should have scoured antique stores for coordinating dishes. But again, whatever.)

 

The next day  the kids were about to have their sugary cereal that they only get on the weekends for breakfast and I thought, Hmm, pumpkin pie and fruit salad would probably be healthier than that. So...

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving with family and friends!

Zoe's Eleventh

Yes, Zoe's birthday was a couple of months ago and I never posted anything on it. At least we celebrated it on time, huh? So here's a little now. She's 11 now! And she had a sleepover/late night party with a few of her friends. I'm pretty sure they all had fun and they are all good kids who aren't too crazy so it didn't drive the mom crazy having all those girls sleeping over.

You're All Welcome Here

Euuugh. There's the made up word of the day. That and withdrawling. I just saw someone use that and it struck me as funny. So life sucks right now. I'm not going to sugar coat it. Oh, the expounding I would like to do right now. But sadly my personal issues need to stay tucked in my head, or at least thrown up all over Brent for a while. I need like twelve people in twelve categories to be able to vent to. You go in the category of politics (which would probably be pretty easy because I've been working on my apathy). You, over there, you take religion. You take paranoia and hypochondria. And what do you want? Hormonal induced depression? Or, what am I going to do with my life crisis. Or, what am I doing with my life crisis. And you. You get gluten free bread.

Really it's just one of those funks or fogs or something that will eventually lift and all will be fine-ish again. There was a glimmer of the fog lifting yesterday. There was also this good line in a song I was listening to: "Some guy on the net thinks I suck and he should know, he's got his own blog." Funny. And I almost feel a little better now. Plus Monday I'm going to start working on Project: Holy Crap I'm Going To Be 40 In About Six Months So I've Got To Get It Together in A Good Way Before Then. Yeah, I'll probably go down that sad little path a little.

I truly believe that being happy all the time is overrated. No, you don't want to walk around all the time like you can't get over the disappointment you met in your teenage years but I think it's good to embrace life and all the emotions it brings. With the caveat that you are still a functional human being and able to get done the necessities and not beat your kids or bug the crap out of your husband. (And yes, I may use the words "crap" and "sucks" too often.) But I see people say things like, "I have decided to allow nothing but happiness into my life." Sure happiness is a choice but you can't remove all pain and unpleasantness from your life. Unless, perhaps, you are very shallow and not capable of feeling a range of emotions or doing anything productive with those emotions. This takes nothing away from those who are naturally optimistic. I see them out there. They are a mystery to me but I know they exist. It's kind of like when I was reading this ADHD forum once (when I was convinced I had ADD, not ADHD though. I've never had enough energy to claim ADHD). Some of the people were debating the pros and cons of medication. Some were of the opinion that they did not want to be on medication because it masked their true personality and forced them into a mold that would make them fit in with society, making themselves sort of a shadow of their true self. I think there is definitely a point there. (*Disclaimer, I am in no way qualified to tell someone with ADHD what to do.*) I think those of us who occasionally go to "the dark side" (and I'm not talking about Satan here so relax) should embrace that side (and really, this is everyone at least once in a while). Like I said before, don't embrace it so much that it is all encompassing and you can't function. Also, too much of that can get a bit self involved and narcissistic. Embracing the good and the bad brings about a clarity I think. See, I was feeling quite blah when I started writing this and I already feel better.

Don't get me wrong. I know I have a good life. Got the husband, kids, etc, down in a good way. But sometimes the crazy- it's there. I don't want to feed it too much, but I want it to know he has just as much right to be here as happy and well adjusted do too.

Halloween 2010

Isabella is a dead princess if you can't tell and friend is Annabeth from the Percy Jackson books.

Noah is brain injury boy

nerdy Zoe and nerdy friend

I Remember

We Have Bread!

And it doesn't have any rice in it. I made my first loaf of gluten free bread today. My first loaf of bread ever, really. I know, I'm lame. I'm still getting over that bread making debacle from foods class in 11th grade. The bread is pretty good too. Tastes a little like wheat and a little like something else. I guess that something else would be buckwheat flour, sorghum flour and teff flour. Whatever they taste like. It's healthier than wheat bread too. Take that wheat! I guess teff is the grain that makes Ethiopean marathon runners run super fast and win all the gold medals at the olympics. Good to know, 'cause I could use an energy boost. So the bread didn't rise quite as good as it should have...I think. But other than that it turned out good. I have to give credit to this cool gluten free blogger where I found this recipe.I guess she's spent hours perfecting her bread. The internet is pretty awesome.

I'm guessing it's not supposed to be bumpy on top, but not bad for a first attempt.

Gl, Gl

I'm debating whether I should start a new blog or not. This one will stay around, although it is quite dead in the water at times. I'm going to be rambling on about gluten free cooking a lot so it may be a good idea to make a new blog-call it "The Incompetent Gluten Free Chef". Now you're all gonna want to steal that name. Or maybe I will ramble on about my new adventure here. Who knows for sure today.

I will say this: I am wary of baking with a flour that has garbanzo beans and fava beans in it. Beans in your cookies are just not natural. But the oatmeal raisin cookies did turn out pretty good. So maybe I'll give it another try. A side note, I don't know all the rules on oats yet. You can ONLY use oats that come from dedicated fields (not contaminated by those evil grains). And I've read some stuff that says you should only eat oats after you've been off gluten for a while and healed up. Something about oats, they don't have gluten but their genetic composition is slightly similar to wheat. Or something like that. I don't know. I could be wrong there. In other good baking news: I bought a Namaste gluten free spice cake mix. Ten thumbs up from everyone here (two per person, not ten, we don't have fifty thumbs collectively). A little denser than regular cake but good still. Almost brownie like but not quite. Makes me think their brownie and blondie mixes must be pretty good. They also don't have a hundred ingredients like a regular cake mix. Only the basic stuff so it's probably healthier.

The other good news is my recurring dream with the words "gluten free" floating around freely has stopped. I was probably mumbling "gluten free" in my sleep. Then there was the worst dream. Gluten Free and Glen Beck. It must have been some sort of "GL" theme. Very disturbing. I really want to go order pizza now. (Nothing to do with my weird dreams, I just don't want to cook dinner.) No? Then tostadas it is. I wish I would have remembered the guacamole.

Answers

I knew I wasn't crazy! Or paranoid. Or overreactive. Is that a word? This has been a while coming. Let me explain a little. It's been at least a couple of years, maybe more like three. We began to notice that one of my kids was slowing way down on her growth. She started out at a solid average height, some even said slightly above average. Then we noticed the shorter kids were catching up with her. Then they were passing her. Did I need to worry? Some said, well kids grow at different rates, she'll grow when her body is ready. No, it just didn't feel right. I know my being 5'9" and Brent being 6' tall is no guarantee of tall children. I don't need tall children. Although the pediatrician did do that prediction thing when she was 2 1/2 and predicted 5'8". But I also know you can't believe everything a doctor says. Especially when she has more than a dozen years to be proven wrong. But come on, I come from tall people. We don't do short. Brent's got mostly tall people in his family too. But maybe she takes after her grandma? Well sure, nothing wrong with that. But it just didn't feel right. So we waited for the growth spurt some said would happen. There was an inch here and there but it didn't seem right. So I took her to the doctor. This was Spring of '09. She was a little concerned. She ordered blood tests and x-rays. Everything was pretty okay. The x-rays showed her bone age was on the young side. That meant she would probably finish growing later than average. A late bloomer. So we moved forward. She grew almost two inches that years! But it looked like everyone else grew four.

I kept saying, well everything must be okay. She's just taking her time. Then why is she still throwing up? Did I not mention the recurring vomiting? But the doctor didn't seem overly concerned and her health seemed fine in general, besides the throwing up, so I tried a wait and see approach. This summer I took her back to the doctor for some immunizations. The doctor was now concerned about her weight. More blood tests were administered. Symptoms were beginning to be added on to this mystery: anemia, vitamin D deficiency. She wasn't absorbing nutrients properly. That would explain why she wasn't growing. I looked for answers on the internet. The doctor prescribed vitamins and ordered more blood tests. Finally, she contacted a pediatric G.I. specialist. So this past Tuesday we went into the hospital and she had an endoscopy. Celiac Disease. You know, the no gluten disease. We finally had an answer. My daughter is happy to have answers. Yes, she has to give up all gluten containing foods (anything with wheat, barley or rye). Forever. We may all try this new diet too. It runs in families and maybe in general it will get us eating more healthy. Get us off so much processed foods. But the best thing is we know what the problem is. We know what we need to do. It's going to be a big change. But it's nothing super scary. We are grateful for that. I love this girl, I'm so happy to know how to help her now. We finally have our answers.

Math Problems

Here is the problem with math. At least for those who stink at doing it. The material is covered too fast and most math teachers, while being very good at doing math, are not very good at explaining math. So you go through class, barely comprehending from week to week. Then you either bomb the class and have to retake it or you scrape by and are not adequately prepared for the next class and the whole thing starts over again. There is rarely a set up for success in these situations. Unless you are blessed with one of those rare teachers who are good at math and good at explaining math to the mathily challenged. I miss you Patty Hayes! (quite possibly one of those rare teachers)