Wordless Wednesday: Summertime Savorings

Organizing Tornadoes

This week has been a bit of a surprise.  So many things I have been putting off dealing with are now actually being dealt with...or at least starting to be dealt with...or, well, something like that.  At any rate, at least I am not running wildly away in despair and frustration.  And yet, I still feel so...wary.  I guess I am waiting to see if things stay on track.

Last night, I dreamed of tornadoes.

Not just one, but a steel gray sky churning with uncountable tornadoes swirling and dropping down from the clouds.  I watched them from the 8th story window at work.  Finally, one of the attorneys said we might want to go to the basement.  (Attorneys are smart like that...you know, all those years of college and all...)  Then, I blinked and--out of nowhere--I was outside on a hill, the wind whipping around me.  I was holding my black cat, trying to cover his head from flying debris, and trying to watch the sky while I scanned for some low place in a field to try to take cover...

...then everything shifted, and I was at a house which, apparently, was owned by an old friend from elementary school and they were getting ready to sit down for dinner, and I was wondering what I would eat, since I was allergic to everything...  Finally, I left her house and walked a familiar sidewalk which led back to my childhood home.  Everything was disjointed and stressful and...exhausting.

I have not dreamed about tornadoes in quite some time.  They tend to be my nocturnal indicator that I feel like my life is out of control.  As a result, I feel a need to get my metaphorical house in order.  I think that I am feeling so out of control with so much in my life right now, and that I just really want to get SOMETHING organized, and I want SOMETHING to make sense.

And  maybe, just maybe, things are starting to make sense again.   (Knock wood.)

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life...

I have successfully navigated my first major food related holiday.  This 4th of July was my first holiday post-Eosinophilic Esophagitis and food allergy diognoses. I spent the weeks leading up to the 4th obsessing over what to take.  I knew that there would be NOTHING I could eat at my in-laws' house ("I am making hot dogs, hamburgers, potatoes salad, and fruit salad with pecans.  I also made a cake and we have ice cream!" they announced.  I mentally checked off each item, "Um, nope, nope, nope, no, no, nope, no-sirree-Bob, yep, that would be a nope...nada.")  Since we were going to be there for about 12 hours straight, I had to plan well.  I spend several hours at several stores getting everything I needed, and cooked all day Sunday; by noon on Monday, I was fairly certain I had slayed that dragon.

The 4th went off without a hitch.  Admittedly, it is a BEAR making a day's worth of food to take to someone else's shin-dig, but this was always an important holiday for my in-laws, kinda their "thing," so to speak, so I figured it was worth the extra effort.

Admittedly, I have no intention of doing this for all the holidays, Thanksgiving is MINE, dude, my house, my food, MINE.  And Christmas is rather a shared holiday...Christmas Eve is theirs, but Christmas Day is a time for kids to jump from their beds, wake up their parents with a shriek, open presents in a frenzy...only to fall asleep among the litter of paper, half pieced together presents, and empty boxes.  It is NOT a day to haul a bunch of food around from house to house, making the rounds, while other people eat things that suddenly look better than what you brought.

One perk of having a lot of food issues is there is no more battling over who has which holiday where, and didn't so-and-so do Christmas last year?, and what shall I bring?, and when does it start because some other relative wants us to come by there, too?  Shudder.  Nope, no more.  No one wants the responsibility of dealing with cross contamination and allergy accommodation.  So we are the outcasts when it comes to the Three Major Food Holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter).

Heh, heh!  Finally, I got them back.  All the holidays...they are MINE!

See, there IS a bright side to this whole food allergy thing.

I kid! I kid!

Kind of...

And now for something completely different...

It's the Little Things...

After work today, I will pick up the kids and drive to the nearby over-sized chain megastore in order to buy a new vacuum.  It is not a particularly expensive vacuum (i.e., it is NOT a Dyson...oh, but that it were, though!), but it is all HEPA-filtery and pet-fur fighting, and it is a snazzy shade of red.

Mine, all MINE!!!

But, the thing is, I am stupid excited about it.  Our vacuum was broke-ish a few weeks ago, but it rattled and clanked on, but then earlier this week I realized that it was not so much "picking up dirt and allergens" as flinging them out and spraying them around room at a high rate of speed.  There was no actual sucking up and retaining of said yuckiness.

So, today I am giving in and taking the plunge.  Honestly, though, as frequently as we go through vacuums, it is not that big of a commitment, it just means I have to fork over more cash.  I think this is the third vacuum in the past 12 months.

I am not exactly WHY we are going through so many vacuums.  When I moved out of my parents' house, lo those many moons ago, I took with my my mother's hand-me-down vacuum.  It had served her well for, perhaps, ten years, and it gave me another ten years of faithful service.  But, admittedly, that was before I was "married with children."  I won't even tell you some of the crap we have dug out of the bowels of those poor vacuums.

The thing that gets me is actually not so much the high rate of vacuum turnover, it is how absolutely GIDDY I am about getting a new vacuum.  I can't wait to buy it, to put it together, and (gasp!) to vacuum with it for the first time (swoon!).

Maybe my giddiness has something to do with feeling like if my surrounding are organized and pulled together that I am, somehow, miraculously, more organized and pulled together myself.  Maybe it is a control thing (i.e., I am a neat freak and it makes me happy).  Maybe it is just an aesthetic thing; I like to be surrounded by things that are beatiful and artistic and seeped in memories, not piles of crap.  Or perhaps it is some combination of all of that.

At any rate, I am getting a new vacuum...and I will vacuum repeatedly...until I can't get anything else out of the carpets, and the cats run in terror, and the kids' blare their TV to hear it over the noise of me cleaning...and I will be smiling.

Today I Did Not Crash and Burn...

...which, by my own definition, makes it a "good" day.

I am trying to keep some perspective here, so bear with me while I ramble.

You see, I have this checklist, and if I answer more than three of these questions as a "no" then I have to proclaim it to be a "Good Day."  Grab some paper and a pen (or pencil, I am not picky) and answer along with me:

1. Did anyone I know and love (or at least like) die?  (This can include animals, if you are so inclined, as I am.)
2. Did a major appliance or vehicle catch fire or become otherwise unusable?
3. Did my major source of income dry up or otherwise become unavailable to me?
4. Is there a major draught or famine that is affecting my ability to feed my family?
5. Did I lose a limb or major organ which cannot be rectified by the "miracle of modern science"?

So, even though my son had to have ten (yes, TEN!) vials of blood drawn to check for a plethora of scary medical issues that might be causing his "heart pain" (as he describes it), and even though my roof is still not fixed, and even though I worry about cars, and bills, and insurance coverage matters, and taking time off for doctors' appointments, and all those other things that seem to be attacking me...I guess it is still a good day.

No one died (knocking on wood), no one has called about any fires or other major appliance meltdowns (still knocking), my husband and I are both still employed (knock, knock...do you see a theme here?), we have food in the fridge, and all my limbs and major organs are all accounted for...so see, all is (basically) well.  (I am going to cease knocking now.)

They won't have the bloodwork back on my son until late this week, and I will let you know as we find out more.  Until then, I welcome any prayers, positive energy, good vibes, blessed intentions, or anything else that might fortify us in the meantime.

Too Hungry to Even Think of a Title

So...vegan it is.  I met with the immunologist on Monday, and she confirmed all my food allergies:  milk, egg, beef, pork, chicken, walnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds, buckwheat, garlic, and pineapple.  And let's not forget the enviromental, sycamore, oak, maple, cedar, and many more trees, eight kinds of mold, various grasses, including one called Timothy, and ragweed and sage, and dustmites, dogs, cats, and birds.  But apparently I can go roll around naked in the Bermuda grass, because it is about the only thing I am NOT allergic to.

So I am currently going through a period of adjustment.  It varies from trying to educate myself and be very pragmatic about the whole thing, then ten minutes later I am ticked off and hungry and not coping very well.  Right now I am on day three of the cranky-hungries.  (Or, for you Harry Potter fans out there, I am feeling rather "Ron Book Seven.")

If you have any good vegan cookbooks you can recommend, favorite vegan products, or if you just want to leave a comment of encouragement, I would be thrilled if you would take a moment...  Food is such a social aspect in our life that having to eat such a restrictive diet is making me feel a bit isolated.

However, in the interest of being a "cup half full" kinda gal (even when my stomach is half empty), at least all this STILL makes for a better day than my kitty Sirius will be having come Monday...

 
...when he finally gets neutered.  (He doesn't know yet.)  I may have to forgo a whole pile of foods that I really love but, hey, at least I still have all the same girl parts as I came into the world with...I call that a win!

You may have noticed that I do actually have cats (despite said cat allergy).  To that, I reply...could you resist this?

Nope, neither could I.  So, we are looking at Rapid Allergy Desensitization, which is basically a fancy way of saying that I need to take off work, get allergy injections all day long at regular intervals while they watch to make sure I don't keel over, and then after said Day of Hell, I "get" to take shots every week for a couple of months, then bi-monthly, and then finally monthly (for about 3-5 years).  If anyone has done this, or knows someone who has, please let me know your experience with the procedure.

In the meantime, I am heading off to bed to read Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin (but I will probably fall asleep as soon as I slide in bed...I gave up caffeine as well this week).  I am already so tired that my eyes hurt, and I have resigned myself to fixing any typos tomorrow...

If You Close Your Eyes...You Can Feel Them

We have always taken pictures in graveyards.  Always.

My husband has always found it strange...morbid.

For as long as I could remember, each Memorial Day was marked by another photo at the head of the grave--next to the stone, so the names and dates might show--giving the dead their place in the family photo.  Not everyone was in the photo, mind you, just those who chose to take the time, to make the journey.

My mother's side of the family had two graveyards to tend, and the journey took the better part of the day.  First driving one direction (for over an hour) then stopping, tending to the stone, arranging the flowers, scattering the rosemary (for remembrance, if you believed Shakespeare, and I did), then facing the camera for the flicker of a moment that it took to memorialize your duty.

Perhaps we would stop for something to eat at Judy Ann's Diner, then we would face the other direction, drive several more hours through twisty, turny back roads, venturing down unmarked gravel roads lined with evening primrose, past the the point where someone asked, "Are you sure this is the right road?  Maybe we should turn around" at least three times, before finding ourselves at a tiny, well-kept graveyard, surrounded by overgrown wildness.  A family graveyard so pristine, with its stones worn smooth, that it did not matter that the names were lost to time...they were family, perhaps a hundred or so faces that I never saw, but part of their blood runs through mine still, so I run my fingers over the vague indentions in the stone, wishing I had thought to bring some paper and some charcoal, and I try to spend enough time with them that I don't feel foolish for the five hour round trip drive that this graveyard's visit cost me.

After all, I remind myself, it is just time...and they have all the time in the world.  What was it that T. S. Eliot said?    ...time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions...

Finally, I raise to my feet for the obligatory photo.

This year, I think it is time to pass this on to the young ones.  I will scrawl a hand drawn map, as my great-grandmother did for me.  I will tell the same stories she told, pointing out the same markers as we drive, and I will feel her there with us as I do.  Her words as familiar to me as my own, as if her stories were mine.  And, in truth, they are.

So as we gather the things to for the journey, there shall be rosemary cut fresh from the plant, and a basket to gather the evening primrose, and there will be my camera.

This year, another generation takes their place in the photo.