ARRGGGGGGG!!!!!!

It's a good thing no one is reading this because I'd be boring the shit out of them. I can't help it. It always comes back to how bloody unfair this all is. Why not foist this disease off on someone who's a size one and lives on 800 calories a day of celery and lettuce? Why not give it to someone who wants it? Come on, there have to be millions of women out there living on lettuce and green beans who'd never even fucking notice! Give it to one of them. Giving it to someone who loved to cook bake and eat is just severely twisted cruel and so below the belt the Gods should be ashamed.

I chanced on a "dieters" thread on ROTW. The damn thing made we want to puke. The poor dears have been eating at McDonald's again and regretting it. Give me a fucking break! If you regret it so damn much STOP DOING IT. Better yet, how about we make it so you become hideously sick and physically damage your body and severely drain it of iron and B C and D vitamins every single time you stuff down a Big Mac and fries, thereby increasing your risk of intestinal cancer ten fold? Would that finally do it for you? Somehow I think not. We want what we want and society has taught us that by Gods, we should have it. I don't think any diet can succeed until someone gets past the feeling that they have a Gods given right to do the easy thing. I don't think a diet can succeed until someone finally figures out that they matter. Their health matters. Their body matters.

I know Celiacs who just can't stop themselves from eating a sandwich or a donut or a cookie. The answer to why is always without fail "I was stressed". Have they been so thoroughly indoctrinated by the whole suggestive hypnotic consumerism trance control squad that they can't think of themselves first and the great God of Consumerism second? Why are they so convinced that eating a donut is in any way shape or form going to alleviate stress? Which commercial did they memorize and internalize that sold them that one? Show me where its documented in the medical annals that eating something bad for you in anyway affects your stress level? I don't understand it. I know I've never knowingly eaten gluten since I was diagnosed. Hey, here's an idea. Stressed? Eat some ice cream! Have a potato chip. But for Goddess sake don't ingest something that will kill you! I don't know. Maybe it's like the pink elephant thing. We can't have it so that's all we think about and all we want. I truly hope there comes a time when I can get past the pink elephants and just accept this.

I'd pay money at this point just to have someone else make me dinner, even McDonalds. One dinner. That's it. One positively gluten free dinner that won't make me sick and that tastes half decent and most importantly THAT I DON'T HAVE TO COOK. Well, okay, Mcdonalds, and indeed every fast food restaurant out there can't do that. With the exception of the Sushi restaurant, there really are no safe options up here at all. Big Bear specializes in resort dining. Again, it's that "You can have whatever you want no matter how bad it is for you" mentality. That's what reigns up here. If I lived down there I'd stand a fighting chance in restaurants. L.A. is more sophisticated. Yeah, I live in a backwoods gluttony haven. It would just be nice to have someone else somehow make dinner. The idea of three meals a day prepared by me stretching out in front of me for the next thirty or forty years is depressing.

I was thinking of this very thing the other night. I was terribly sick with some stomach bug. It appears that from now on things like that are going to hit me harder than they did before. Joy. But I was laying in bed desperate for a cup of crushed ice. Two pairs of eyes stared back at me as I moaned and wished, one pair leaf green, the other pair amber brown. Neither of the owners of those eyes posses opposable thumbs. I dragged myself out of bed and crushed my own ice. There is no telling how much I would have given right at that point to have someone else there to crush the ice for me. But that's the rub isn't it? How much would I have to pay? Am I willing to put up with all the nonsense of a relationship and the grief and the pain on the off chance that someday when I'm sick that man would actually be willing to go crush me some ice? What are the odds?

Argggg. I just hope there comes a time when I just accept this. Dragging myself through all this over and over again is just too hard.

Fed Up!

I'm so damn tired of this stupid disease. I just want to be normal.

I grilled three weekends ago. It made me sick. I grilled two weekends ago. It made me sick. Last week I figured out why. Many charcoal manufacturers use wheat as binding and filler in charcoal. I was literally burning wheat, inhaling it and eating the wheat ash on my food. And of course I buy the cheap store brand match light charcoal which is more likely to use larger amounts of filler and binder. When I bought the charcoal the pure wood charcoal and kingsford were about the same price and the store brand was significantly cheaper. So not knowing any better I bought the cheapest charcoal. I'm struggling so hard right now just to keep my financial head above water, so of course I bought the cheapest brand. Between the rising cost of gas and food and the growing list of food allergies I can't just eating anything anymore. I can't buy the cheapest anything anymore because invariablly whatever it is, be it shampoo or charcoal, it will have wheat or barley or oats in it.

Then there's the question of whether or not the BBQ is now too contaminated to continue to use. I cleaned it out good this last weekend and grilled again. It made me sick again. I guess the answer is yes, it's too contaminated to continue to use. So if I ever want to grill again I'm going to have to get a brand new gas grill. Yeah. I tried pricing those. Nothing under $120. Where the hell am I gonna get $120? Guess I'm not grilling for awhile. Gee thanks. Can't go to a restaurant or order take out, now I can't grill. Guess I'm damned lucky there's still anything I can eat.

I can't afford this stupid Disease anymore!!!I am just so tired of this. I'm tired of paying more for things. I'm tired of not being able to eat in restaurants or ordering take out or delivery. I'm tired of being accidentally glutened. I'm tired of calling and emailing before I can buy or eat something because some stupid manufacturer doesn't have the good graces to spell out what "Natural Flavorings" means. I just want to be normal. I want to do what normal people do. I want to eat pizza and hamburgers like a normal human being.

But I've finally learned one important lesson. Always keep Haagen Dazs ice cream in the house. Again, yeah I'd buy a cheaper brand but they put some bizzare shit in ice cream, including of course barley and wheat. Haagan Daza, bless them has total of five normal safe ingredients listed on their ice cream. No additives, no preservatives, just cream milk coccoa sugar and eggs. If only I could live on Haagen Dazs chocolate ice cream and ruffles potato chips I'd be set. At the very least Haagen Dazs ice cream is comforting. I'll settle for that right now this minute.

Shelter

I've never been fond or romantic poetry and love songs. The whole idea of another person as the center of my universe doesn't appeal to me these days, and it's never had a big appeal. I guess because no one in my life has ever lived up to those idealized verses and prose. I've never found shelter in another person. It was never for lack of looking or wanting. Many many is the time, even now, when having just one person in my life to provide respite from the frustration and interminably hard work of being alone would have been so welcome.

The closest I guess I've ever come was my father, and my father's house. He was a good man. That's the highest praise I think I can offer him. He was a man who in ever instance I ever saw made the decent kind choice. He was also the one person who I knew would always believe in me. How he managed to instill that sense of unfailing belief I do not know, but I knew no matter what I did he would always support my choices. Being a man and from the old school there weren't many affectionate gestures, but I grew up with this rock in my life. He grew to become the voice in my head. It's his point of view, his visions, his decency that the little voice in my head speaks with. 17 years after his death it's still his voice.

Then there is my father's house. He and my mother bought it at a time and place where owning your own home was a new American glory. That was in the fifties, the post WWII optimism as work. The new dream, the new America. He was proud of that accomplishment. I lived in that house for almost two thirds of my life. I rode out two major earthquakes in that house, and a few dozen minor ones, not to mention death and fear and rage and sorrow. And it sheltered me and kept me safe. Live in one place for so long and it becomes a part of who you are. There are no other childhood memories of home and shelter but that house. It's such a gigantic part of my life. And buying it was one of my father's prouder achievements.

It's a long story, but I've heard that house calling out to me for years, wanting to be saved. I can't explain that, but that's how it's felt. And I've been frustrated by recalcitrant irrational family nonsense every inch of the way in an effort to save it. But now I wonder what it is I'm saving? And what will be left of the only real shelter I've ever known once all the dust settles. The house had a new roof put on twelve years ago. Unfortunately it was put on by idiots with no permanent business address. It leaked virtually from day one. For family reasons that I really don't have the energy or will to explain, while the house belonged to my father's trust I had no say in it's disposition. This time last year I took legal steps to change that. After abandoning the idea that any of my siblings would be helpful, a bizarre belief I've harbored most of my life, I hired a lawyer, borrowed the money and wrestled control of the house from the trustee. I wanted to save it. I wanted to give it whatever it needed and let it go on and house another family and give shelter to another child, and that was the best way to honor my memories.

I found out last night that there is very little left that can be saved. The roof, including beams and even some ceiling joists will have to come completely off. Twelve years of water damage has rotted the beams. The roof, the shelter will be gone, completely gone, the core of the house open to the sky, exposed. The kitchen and bathroom sub floors are rotted. They need to go. The kitchen and bathrooms have to be gutted. Most of the landscaping my father and mother and I planted has gone wild and will simply be stripped away and replaced with green sod. Even the stucco on the outside cannot be saved. It will have to be re stuccoed or sided. In trying to save it we will be creating something unrecognizable.

All I could do last night was walk around and around my own small home and cry and say "I'm sorry" over and over. I know I did all I could. I know there was never anything more I could have done that would have saved the poor house from being stripped to it's studs. I did everything, said everything I could think to in the last ten years and it all fell on deaf ears. But still I feel this overwhelming sense of having let my father down. It's irrational, but somehow, over the decades a house made of wood and stucco and glass becomes more than just a building. It becomes the personification of a life's goals, or many lives goals. It becomes a living creature that you can't simply cut out of your life.