Time to Fill the Cupboards!

Fall is coming.  Despite the 100+ degrees outside, I know this to be true, because suddenly I want to hoard large amounts of food in my cupboards and my deep freeze.  My pantry mocks me with its barrenness.  I feel the overwhelming need to tidy and organize.  I want to stockpile food for the animals and cat litter.  For some reason, I have to use every bit of self control I have to avoid digging out the pumpkin shaped soup tureen and the tapestry "autumn leaf design" place mats.  I want to track down bales of hay (which are not yet available around here) to decorate the yard.  I want to stuff scare crows.  (Not like this however...

this Doctor Who creeped me out!)

I feel the undeniable need to purchase large quantities of pumpkins and squash and dried corn.  I want to make (vegan) fudge, and pop popcorn, and watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, because that is what we do in the fall.

The only problem is...it isn't fall.  It isn't time yet.

And yet...I feel it so strongly.  So let me make my prediction now, on the record, and come Spring we will see if there was any truth to the instinct:  I predict a bad winter.  I believe the snow and ice and cold will take us by surprise.  I predict that you should stockpile your toilet paper now, to avoid a last minute convergence at the nearly-barren stores once "they" decide that perhaps the storm is a bit stronger than they originally anticipated. I suggest that, perhaps, if you have a few extra dollars in your budget, you  might consider getting a few more canned goods, or dried beans, or rice...

As for me, I will endeavor to hold off another week or two before I start breaking out the carefully packed boxes of autumnal glory.  And I will try not to complain TOO much about the 100+ degree temperatures, because I think that once the snow starts to fall we might actually miss it...just a bit...as we thaw our toes before the fire.

What Do We Say When the God of Death Comes for Us?

No, I am not dead...although I did have a close call last week.  I was at work, and realized I was getting hungry around 3:30.  So I decided to run to the break room and make a quick peanut butter sandwich on a vegan sandwich round.  Someone had left a sandwich baggie and knife out, so i cleared it away before making my sandwich.  I was so hungry that I had my sandwich eaten before I had even made it back to my desk.

And this is when things started to go horribly wrong.

I sat at my desk and tried to finish some work, but the tickle in the back of my throat was starting to feel rather itchy.  I kept clearing my throat.  I got up and went to the ladies' room.  There is a chair in there, and I promptly sat in it and tried to decide what the heck was going on.

One of my co-workers came in and asked if I was ok.  I am afraid I may have been a bit terse when I assured her I was.  Clearly my being rude was some sort of code to Send in Someone Else--namely, one of my best friends, Angela.

Angela came barrelling into the bathroom, her eyes full of panic.  After quickly assessing the situation, Angela went and got my Benadryl (which I was loathe to take, since taking it meant that my allergy testing would have to be postponed).  While Angela asked how much I should take, I swigged a mouthful, and felt my throat continue to tighten.

Angela ran and got my purse, which had my EpiPen.  Now, back when I first filled my prescription for the EpiPen, Angela and I had had the "EpiPenTalk."  She knew how to use it, but that did NOT mean that she was ready for it.  Hell, I wasn't ready for it.

But, once I actually had it in my hand and felt air becoming harder and harder to come by, I removed the endcap and looked Angela in the eyes as I jabbed it into my thigh.  She looked away.

At first, I thought something had gone wrong.  I did not feel the injection at all.  No pain, no prick, no...nothing.  Finally, after about ten seconds, I felt my hands go cold--like someone poured ice water under the skin.  I felt relieved, because I knew that "something" was working for me.

Then I grew shakier.

And shakier.

Angela went to go tell the office administrator that she was taking me to the hospital.  When she was gone, I was struck by the feeling that there was lightening trapped in my hands.  It felt like electricity was blowing through my fingertips.  (For all your Doctor Who fans out there, think of those regeneration scenes...

personally, I adore Doctor 10).  Sigh.  Sorry...where was I?

Oh, right!  Angela came back to tell me she was going for the car.  I tried to ask her to have someone sit with me.  I was suddenly worried about being left alone.  When I tried to talk, I became aware that my words were slow to come...halting...I felt like...William Shatner.  Then I realized that it was not my words that were slow to come...it was my thoughts...the cadence of my thoughts sounded like William Shatner's speak pattern.

This alarmed me more than the lightning hands, which was actually kind of cool in a geeky sort of way.

I remember calling my husband.  I do not remember what I said.  I do, however, remember shaking a lot.

Apparently, I somehow half-walked and half-staggered with assistance until I reached Angela's car.

In case you wondered, Angela drives like shit when she is nervous/scared/worried.  I remember asking her not to kill me while trying to save my life.  She stared ahead, hands clenched around the steering wheel and said, "I know, right?"

We made it to the hospital (and Angela parked illegally over several "bicycle" parking spots).  She never mentioned having gotten a ticket, so I am assuming she didn't.  Which is good, because I feel guilty enough as it is.

The good news is that, apparently, if you have anaphylactic shock, they make a point to get you RIGHT BACK into the ER--no waiting.  The bad news is that we were asked to follow some unnaturally spry older gentleman who took no notice of my staggering and proceeded to sprint ahead of us as we tried to navigate the twisty turns of the "Fast Track Triage."  We did not even bother trying to keep up.  By this point, I felt fairly certain that we had kept Death at bay, so why run down corridors now?

My husband met us at the hospital, and I actually ended up getting home about the same time I would have if I had not decided to make a dramatic exit.

For those that have actually read this far, we do not know for certain what I reacted to.  I suspect that the mess I had cleaned up in the kitchen had one of my allergens on it.  (Thanks, Office Slob, for nearly killing me!)

And, having been deep in my reading of "A Dance With Dragons" (which, I lamented to Angela, I had left at work in all the allergy madness), I will end with the line that kept trickling through my brain as this all transpired:

"What do we say when the god of death comes for us?"  "Not today!"

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.