Oh the humanity!

Sienna is upset because her favorite tank top – a pink shirt with a sparkly castle on the front – is getting put away for the winter. She’s also mad because, with my current diet, we are trying new foods all the time. She doesn’t want to try new foods and the faces she makes remind me of the ones she made when she was trying her first real foods for the first time. And I won’t let her have apple cider unless she eats her new food. One bite. One bite is all I ask of them and it’s too much. She wants gum, she wants treats, she wants TV. She doesn’t want to ride the bike with the training wheels because she likes her tricycle. She doesn’t want to be outside because there are bees.

Ethan is mad because he likes shorts better than pants but when he wears them he is “freezing-beezing”. He also wants to wear his flip-flops and not socks and shoes. But his feet get wet when he walks through puddles. He has a cold, and I do feel bad for him but it makes his voice even more high pitched when he whines and oi! I can’t take it! He doesn’t mind trying the new foods and even thanks me for making sure that they are only eating healthy things – and refuses to eat treats at times because they aren’t good for him. But he doesn’t want to do worksheets to earn time on the Wii, but oh how he wants to play! Sienna and Kaylee won’t do what he’s telling them to do and they are ruining his imagination.

Kaylee, who tends to be more laid back, is upset because the other two are upset. She hates for them to “win” at anything so she pipes in, adding crocodile tears here and there just for good measure.

I’ve been whining, too. I am done with this cruddy diet. My family had pizza last weekend and I ate rice, pistachios, and an apple. I’ve been eating rice cakes with hummus or cashew butter and making smoothies every day. It wasn’t so bad at first because there seemed like lots of options to eat – but after almost three weeks of “all those choices”… I’m a wimp. I admit it. I don’t really feel like this has helped my headaches but even if it were helping, I’d almost think that having pizza would be worth a migraine. Or a chocolate lava cookie. A real burger sounds delicious too.

Our house has been seized by the large beast known as discontentment. So, as I posted on Facebook: Yes. Yes I would like some cheese with my whine.

Sitting Ducks

I don’t think there’s anything wrong having all your ducks in a row. It’s good to be prepared for things; to know what’s ahead so you can plan for it. Personally, I try to have my ducks in place for at least the next ten years – preferably forty or fifty. Lately, though, I feel like my ducks are in one of those fair games where the flat metal mallards go around and around in circles while the happy fair-goers take aim and obliterate them, one by one. The happy fair-goer with the best aim, apparently, is God.

It all started way back at the tender age of 18. I was an adult (I’d tell you not to burst out laughing, but I did, so I guess you can, too.) and I knew everything. (Admit it, you also knew everything when you were 18.) I knew I would marry Tom. I knew we’d buy a house. I knew we’d have kids. And I knew exactly when it would all happen.

Sigh.

Tom wasn’t ready to get married when I was – for some reason, he seemed to think it would be prudent to wait until he graduated from college and got a job. Can you imagine? He didn’t think he could support us with a part time job. Gee whiz. Couldn’t we have lived on love? Who needs a roof over your head when you are in your lover’s arms? I begged him to at least get engaged but he wanted to buy me a nice ring. I probably would have settled for a Cracker Jack decoder ring.

He (finally) asked me to marry him when I was 19. Of course, I said “Yes” – I would have said it a year earlier, too. If all had gone according to (my) plans, we’d have gotten married the next month. As it was, I made a paper chain with 300 plus loops. In my plans, the last loop symbolized the beginning of eternal happiness and bliss. (And all the married people say, “Amen”. *crickets* *crickets* Yeah, it’s been great, but it hasn’t been easy.)

When we finally got married, I was a whole month over 20 years old – practically an old maid. And it was everything I imagined. Except that, not long after we settled in our apartment, I decided we should go looking for houses. Tom said we weren’t ready to buy a house yet. He thought we needed to have more in our savings account first.

Sigh.

I wanted kids as soon as we bought our house. We moved into this home in 2002 and Ethan was born in 2005 a year after our first miscarried baby would have been born. Now, three years really isn’t that long in retrospect. Especially not when you compare it with some friends of mine who suffered through 5 or 8 or 10 years before they had kids. But at the time, I was royally ticked at God for not getting His behind on my schedule. (I was going to say “holy heinie” and I think it would have made Him giggle, but I chose not to just to keep it on the serious side.) Not to mention that two more losses and then twins were not in my plans.

So after all that, I feel like I deserve a break; like maybe God oughta give me a few (dozen) years that go according to my plan. But no, in comes misters Ehlers and Danlos (as in EDS), telling me that my elbow-licking skills are causing my headaches and that now, I have to be more flexible with my life because I never know when the big ones are coming. Every day is a tentative schedule – no matter how far in advance I planned it. Isn’t it funny that my flexibility is teaching me to be more flexible? All those years ago, I thought my plan was best. I still do at times- probably because God won’t show me all of His plan. And, heck, I have no idea why He shot so many of my ducks down or how many more will bite the dust before it’s all said and done. I just know that every day is a stretch; even when I wake up, I can’t be sure of how the day will go. The more I stretch, the more flexible I get. I guess you could say that I’m learning to look at life as a roller coaster (Sorry for the overly used cliche, but look: I’ve got a good connector!) – and since I can’t ride real ones, I guess it’ll have to do.

Holy lawn mower, Batman!

I haven’t posted about mowing the lawn in a long time. So I thought I’d make all of you who are waiting anxiously to hear any updates on my lawn mowing adventures happy by writing about this scintillating subject. It’s been raining more lately than it has all summer, so my lawn looks like it’s spring except there are colorful leaves from our maple tree mixed in with the thick, green grass. We don’t have a mulcher on our mower, nor do we have one of those trash can contraptions that the mower can blow the grass clippings into. So when the lawn is long like this, the clippings are just sprayed all over the lawn. Sometimes into the neighbor’s lawn. I don’t care how it looks, but it’s really annoying to go barefoot and have all this grass stuck to your feet and then your feet turn green. The other fun thing about this time of year is the leaves. I don’t have to rake anymore. I just mow in circles until the leaves are pulverized. Unless, of course, I rake them into a pile to play in. I tried mowing over the pile last year and let’s just say that wasn’t successful. The lawn mower still smokes when I turn it on.

I’ve noticed that other people actually bother to keep their lawn tractors clean. I personally like the dusty handprint look. Makes me feel tough or farmer-like. The headlight hanging in front by the wires adds to that effect. I feel that zipping around the yard in 5th gear makes me seem more country-girl as well. (Who am I kidding? I am a country girl. Hello, McFly!)

Apparently, you are supposed to perform some kind of maintenance on lawn tractors. Oil changes, replacing air filters – I did know you have to put air in the tires. Lawn mowers don’t move very fast when the tires are flat.

Truth is, I have impressed myself this summer. See, when we only had a push mower, I’d hear the mower running “rough”. No big “clunks” or grinding noises, just something different. Every time I heard that sound, it was out of oil. (Turns out you need to change the oil in push mowers too. You learn something new every day.) So this summer, I thought it was just me when the riding mower started doing the same thing. It just sounded rough.

I must take a moment to explain to you just how amazing it is that I could hear any difference at all. Between the rattling of the battery, loose mower deck, and other random clunking noises, you’d have to be a real mechanic to notice anything out of the ordinary.

So I opened the hood (is that what it’s called on a tractor?) and checked the oil. (I’m just a jack of all trades, I am.) Lo and behold… bone dry. So I dumped in a quart of 5W-30 (I’m impressing you all over the place today!) and started it up again. Just a note, in case you’re taking them, don’t overfill the oil or you’ll have a very unpleasant smelling smoke billowing out every time you start the mower. Not that I’ve done that, I’ve just heard. Now the mower is running smoothly again. Well, “smooth” is a relative term, but you know what I mean.

Stay tuned for more tales of the mower. Maybe next time, I’ll tell you about how my dad took out three trees in a single day with a lawn tractor. That’s a good story.

Elimination DIET. It’s as scary as it sounds.

I’ll give you a back story – I have an eating disorder. I’ve done well with not obsessing over foods. I didn’t know how much I weighed until last week I was at the doctor and told the nurse I didn’t want to know how much I weighed. She laughed and then told me how much I weighed. Didn’t the fact that I stood with my back to the numbers and with my eyes covered hint to her that I might be serious??

Anyhoo. So Dr. Bolognese from The Chiari Institute had recommend that I test for food sensitivities. People with Chiari (which, technically, I don’t have because the symptoms are from my EDS and not a brain malformation, but since I have the same symptoms, this applies) often get headaches because of what they eat since their body tissues can swell imperceptibly as a reaction to a food – brain tissue can swell, too. And when it’s already crowded in there, it’s just that much worse. Well, I did not want to test for sensitivities because I have long suspected that I was sensitive to something. One of my greatest fears is that I am sensitive to gluten because I love carbs. Oh, I know I can make gluten-free stuff. But it can’t be the same. Substitutes are just not the original, ya know?

So my appointment in New York was in July and I’m finally getting around to finding out how to test. Turns out that the best way to test for sensitivities (not allergies, mind you) is to do an elimination diet. That means getting rid of all possible culprits such as gluten (wheat), dairy, soy, eggs, peanuts, and everything else in the world that tastes good. It’s basically a form of torture for people like me – who eat cookies and milk for breakfast and say that it’s healthy because they were peanut butter cookies and peanut butter has protein.

The other big issue, though, is that I can’t help but be excited that I will probably lose weight since I can’t eat anything I really love. And of course, the problem with that is that I don’t need to lose weight and yet I really want to anyway. It’s always been in the back of my mind, lurking: The thought that maybe someday I’ll be skinny. Doesn’t matter if I already am thin, my mind will always tell me I’m not thin enough.

So far (four days in), that’s not been a real issue. I seem to have trained myself to be ok with eating crappy food. So much so that I almost want to cry when I’m hungry because I don’t know what to eat when all I want is garlic bread or cinnamon rolls. On the other hand, I tried lamb the first time and it was yummy! And I feel good. Yep. Last week, before I started, was miserable. I was functional – made it to school and our homeschooling group – but spent the afternoons and evenings begging my kids to be quiet because noise was hurting my ears. One of the days, I just went up and laid in my bed because light was too much too.

I started the diet on Friday and yesterday (Sunday) I woke up feeling good – not ok, but good. I guess it’s too early to attribute it to the diet; I still think my evil ovary has something to do with it but with no uterus, I have no idea what that egg producer is up to or when. And I did get a pretty good headache last night – but I spent the whole afternoon looking for beach glass, with my head down and that aggravates my neck which, in turn, aggravates my head. I got a headache this morning, but I think that was because I had to get a CT scan (to make sure I don’t have an aneurysm in my aorta since blood vessels are made of connective tissue and EDS is a connective tissue disorder) and wasn’t allowed to eat until after it was over. So I had to skip breakfast and skipping meals is a big no-no for me. Definitely a trigger.

Since then, I’ve felt great. Yes, I said great. I think I’d go so far as to say I don’t even have headache right now. If I keep feeling good after a few weeks, I get to add in a food and see if it affects me adversely. (Note, I did not say “effects” – it’s a huge pet peeve of mine when people mix those up!) I don’t know how I feel about finding out that something specific triggers the monster headaches. What if I can never eat chocolate again?? Oh the humanity! Yet, if it were as simple as avoiding certain foods or food groups and wearing my collar and vest sometimes, I could live with that. Because for the past year, I don’t feel like I’ve been living at all.

Headaches are back… Yippie!

I had a good run – more than a week – with only minor or even no headaches. It was amazing. I rode my bike. I cleaned. I had energy and the desire to do things. I woke up last week and the dull ache I was used to was back. My energy disappeared. It was back to the same old misery. Since then, my head has gone from dull aches to strong aches and back to dull. It’s ok – I’ve kind of learned to deal with it. And I’ve even managed to find some positive things about this.

First – I know that I’m not just lazy. When I felt good, I actually felt like doing things. Now I know that I’m tired and dragging because of my headaches and the EDS. It may seem like a silly thing, but it’s frustrating to think that cleaning toilets is too much work. Especially when I just woke up.

Second – it’s not all in my head. I have to admit that when I started feeling better, I worried that we had wasted a ton of money on the trip, the doctor, and the vest/collar/traction unit. Especially because I hadn’t used them as much as prescribed. Now, I’m glad I have them again because they help so much with the headaches.

Third – Well. I don’t know if I have a third. Actually, I’m a little frustrated because I think I’m going to end up wearing my collar more places. And I hate that idea. I feel stupid in it. People stare and want to know what’s wrong. I wore it at CC (our home school group) today and everyone thought I’d been in a car accident. It’s so hard to explain about acquired Chiari and EDS and cranial settling. And the worst is that everyone says, “Oh, I hope you feel better soon.” Sigh. I do to – but as I’ve said a million times, I don’t really expect to. At this point, I’m learning how to live with this condition rather than looking for a way to feel better.

I might end up wearing it at school tomorrow. Blech. I really really don’t want to do that. But if I do it once, I’ll explain it to everyone and after that, they’ll know why I am wearing it. I guess the embarrassment is better than a headache – though I really really hate to be embarrassed.

I’m a poet and I didn’t know it

Ha ha! I’m also a cheeseball who loves goofy things. Last night I got second (would have been first if I had gone last, the judges are much more generous as the night goes on) place in a poetry slam. I don’t think I consider myself a poet – but gosh it’s fun to read my stuff for people! If you want to know the kind of stuff that wins national poetry slams, check out this link: (Warning, she uses the f-bomb, but if there’s ever a good place to use it, I felt this was appropriate.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0

It gives me goosebumps. And I could see myself doing that. I don’t know if I’ll ever enter bigger competitions – I’m not really competitive. But I really love to read my stuff out loud. And if what she wrote is poetry – well, I can do that. I’m not committing to anything – I have no plans to try to be on a slam team. Yet, it has this certain appeal to it…

Ah well, anyway, search for poetry slams on YouTube and you’ll find all kinds of good stuff. Maybe someday, you’ll even find me.