Stuff

and by "Stuff" I mean STUFF, as in how much stuff do I have, how long have I had it, does it hold any value for me personally, or for others...

MinsGame 2.3

Round two, day three. These are the zipper packs that sets of sheets came in. I bought the sheets over a month ago and still have these. I will NOT store the sheets in them, who can ever fold sheets as tightly as they were folded when purchased? Not me! That is for sure. I do have a couple of large zipper packs like these that I store my quilt and my fake down comforter in off season, but they are not so difficult to work with .... So these are IN THE TRASH!

But Hope, you may say, "today is day three. You are supposed to have THREE items." Well, item number three was actually maybe ONE HUNDRED items! Kelly R came over and helped me sort through some mail and piles of papers and I BURNED a bunch of them! Much faster than taking them to work and shredding them.

Angie S. also came over tonight and she vacuumed all my floors and tidied a bunch of stuff while I mowed the yard and burned already pulled weeds.

I really needed help tonight. I've been feeling overwhelmed this week by life in general and for me it usually manifests in physical ways like headache and fatigue, and that leads to the accelerated decay of my physical surroundings. Both Monday night and last night I came home from work and went to bed and slept. I even skipped food bank on Monday night, which is fairly rare.

So YAY for friend help and for fire.

Almost there...

I've been baking bread since I got home (sorta). I made three loaves and they are doing the last little bit of cooling so I can turn them out and put some olive oil on the crust to keep it soft. It smells SO good. It's like self-torture to make yeast bread and not eat gluten! I'm charging $8/loaf though, and I have a couple of people who have said they want to purchase this on a regular basis. It is a blend of wheat and white whole wheat flour, so 100% whole grain, with added whole cornmeal and bulgur kernels. Olive oil, yeast, water and salt. No sugar! I didn't believe it would rise without sugar and really thought the recipe was incorrect. It rises just fine, and it's really quite lovely!

I will deliver this by 9:00 in the morning and then after that I can work on the house and sleep until time to go to the play in the evening. Ian Martin, (I have to put his name so I can prove I knew him when) has a good role in a play called "Intimate Apparel." It's gotten some good reviews and I am anxious to see my former castmate in TKAM (He played Tom Robinson) in another show.

I've been fighting a nagging, but not severe, headache for almost a couple of weeks now. I am sure it is sinus pressure because the temps have been going up and down here and the NE coast is getting some major snow now so it is all related. I look forward to sleeping tonight!

Baking Bread

of which I will not eat one bite.

It's been a year since I decided to eat gluten free. To tell the truth I will have to say it has been reduced gluten, not gluten free. I will still eat bread when I eat out, and a couple of times I have had a serious pasta craving and fulfilled it.

During the past year...

The best scientific thing I have read that supports the idea is that wheat is not the same as it used to be. It has had generations of selective breeding and now is GMO to make it contain much more (I can't remember the %) gluten than it used to. This makes it more suited to commercial baking.

The most significant things about my own health I have noticed are...

I automatically eat fewer carbs. I have not replaced bread or pretzels or cakes and cookies with other carb rich foods. I have done some of my own baking and cooking with alternative flours, but I have not purchased a lot of commercially prepared products. Most of them are rice flour, tapioca flour and other flours that are highly processed and simple carbs, unlike the whole grain flour products I prefer.

When I do go mostly without and then indulge I can see the effects. I get constipated, badly - as in don't poop for a week, become bloated and in pain constipated. If I do this prunes are my friends.

I feel like my joint issues become much worse when I consume gluten. When I had the UU dinner group last week I ate bread, bread stuffing, and cake. Yesterday my knees and hips ached so badly I had to take ibuprofen.

I haven't noticed that gluten is a direct headache trigger. I will say, however, that I have had headaches with less frequency and lower intensity than previously. I did make a label on here for headache triggers that I am going to try to watch.

All in all, I think an effort to reduce the gluten is worth it. It keeps me mindful of my eating and has helped me in the ways above.

Posting, posting, posting.

I plan to post every day in 2013. It won't always be profound. It won't always be long, but it will always be.

I am having a rough year so far. I stayed home for NYE. Debbie came over and we watched a movie and stayed up until midnight, but didn't get wild at all.

I went to bed around 1:30, after just farting around for a while. I awakened at 3:30 or so with a sick stomach. It felt a lot the way it did last year when I was sick all the time, except, it also hurt a lot more. I was basically up the rest of the night trying to make it stop. I tried sipping water, warm baths, heating pad. Finally around 7:30 I got up and took a dose of phenergan.  Phenergan is a major anti-emetic. I woke up again at 9:30 and despite the drug vomited violently and copiously. After that I went back to sleep and woke up at almost 11:00 with a terrible headache. I got some sparkling apple juice, the only mild beverage I have and started sipping on that. I slept again until about 3:30 when I got up and took Tylenol with caffeine. Now I've slept until almost 6:00. I'm up now at almost 6:30 and I'm going to eat some fried potatoes and see how that goes. I guess I will hit the store tomorrow and get some ginger ale and arm myself with fruit snacks, etc to use to keep my sugar level if this gets bad again. The pain really scared me. I was really close to going to urgent care. I was thinking about how on MeYou Health some of the assessment questions have to do with basic access to health care. Right now I don't have a doctor, don't have refills to some of my meds, I'm out of test strips, which the insurance covers only if you get them with a prescription, and I'd have to go to Urgent care or the ER to get seen. Sigh.

I am going to try to keep track and see if I can figure out what might be triggering headaches and nausea. Last night I drank a bunch of Diet Orange Sunkist, because it tasted SO good. It's full of artifical colors, which I usually don't have. Hmmm.