Moving On?

I need to remember for future reference just how bad bad was. I don't want to forget because I don't want to let denial or carelessness or frustration take hold in my life. I can see that happening. But this cannot be a short fling of passion. This has to be a lifetime commitment. I have to let go of the past and move into this life finally and permanently.

Uh, well, okay, commitment has never been a favorite word in my vocabulary. And no, that's not the reason I'm still and always have been single. Shut up. Anyway, I never cared for the concept of commitment; not to anyone or anything. Hell, even the animals, if you think about it, are a short term thing. The dog at the outside will live to be 16 if she's lucky. The cats, may the Gods help me, could live to be 20. I have no clue how long house finches live, but I'd say since Fidget has already survived what should have killed her that she's been on borrowed time since I met her. The point is, I've never said "Forever" to anyone or anything in my life before now, most particularly to myself. I can't even imagine how extraordinary a man would have to be for me to agree to that whole "Till death do us part" thing. Me and forever do not have a stellar track history.

But we're talking about my physical life on this earth in this incarnation. I'm here for a reason and I know I haven't finished up here yet, not even close. I'm also positive that this whole experience is part of that grand sick twisted plan the Gods have for me. I've grown to hate their sense of humor - truly. At any rate, I would prefer to die quietly in my sleep at 98 than in pain from some horrible malady at 50. So in many ways I'm up against a do it right or die enemy. I've never contemplated that before. And in truth I always figured cancer or diabetes would be the bugaboos that would eventually come along to frighten the crap out of me. I was so not prepared to face an enemy masquerading as soft chewy golden brown and warm out of the oven. The enemy is supposed to be dark and menacing. It is not supposed to arrive in the person of a loaf of crusty french bread. How do you take an enemy like that seriously?

But the lifetime complications of gluten intolerance read like a who's who of chronic disease and disorder. The complications I've already experienced are chronic diarrhea, indigestion and acid reflux, severe anemia and vitamin deficiencies, brain fog, depression, extreme exhaustion, nausea, horrible joint pain, kidney disease, chronic bronchitis and various and assorted minor auto immune issues. I'm lucky. No - really. The real nasty complications can kill you.

The depression was probably the worse side effect. I suspect that it's colored my entire life, how I've lived, the choices I've made, all of it. It leaves me to wonder when people throw around the phrase "chemical imbalance" if they even get the implications. Do they get how profound a link there is between what you put in your body and how you feel? Body and mind are not separate entities. Vitamins and minerals play a big part in how well the brain functions. Gluten intolerance destroys the small intestines ability to absorb many crucial vitamins and minerals which in turn effects the thyroid and hormone output which throws everything out of whack. It's a cascade effect. The perfect balancing of the body's mechanisms is so fragile in some ways. I wonder if some day we won't come to understand that we create the chemical imbalances, all of them by not understanding our physical bodies, our very genes?

I came across a diet concept the other day called the Paleolithic diet. It's the idea that man evolved as a hunter gathering, and his genes are programmed to a hunter gatherer's diet. Then there are my genes which specifically do not allow my body to process gluten. Genetically speaking I was never meant to eat grains. So what else is there we don't yet understand about the human body? We know it needs sunlight, some people need it more than others. What else are we as individuals genetically programmed to need that we're not giving out bodies, or what is it we're giving our bodies that they can't handle? Western medicine wants to hand us a pill, all of us, the same pill and be done with it. I don't think it's that simple.

I'm not knocking the pill. I took an anti-depressant for about a year. I remember the profound sense of relief when it kicked in. The lows were gone, there was just this calming steady plateau suddenly in my life. I began to understand for the first time what life without depression is like. It saw everything with new eyes. It was a tremendous lesson. But it came to the point where I couldn't afford it. With no insurance to pick up the cost I couldn't manage the $120 dollars a month. But just knowing that life can be like that was a revelation and later, there were many days when that knowing sustained me.

As the effects of Celiac Disease got worse and worse over the last year the depressions came one on top of the other, just piling up, incredibly dark. I could feel it coming most days, and it had started to scare me. It was all I could do to breath, to sneak a breath in between crashing blows. It was no longer just a vague grayness that colored my life, but sudden, devastating descents into pitch black holes, over and over, like riding a roller coaster that periodically got close to the light, but never really saw it. I was scared and puzzled and devastated by it, and that was on top of all the other bodily effects going on. Once I began to understand what was happening to my body I began to see the patterns in the roller coaster ride. Hell, I can now see the pattern running throughout most of the last ten years of my life.

Yeah, then a new kind of depression took hold. Once I went gluten free the sudden descents into the deep dark holes stopped, but it was replaced by a persistent anger fueled depression. I'm still trying to find my way out of that. But that's okay. It's not the bleak insane darkness, and I prefer it. I don't know exactly how to explain it. Behind the anger fueled depression is a calm backdrop. The insanity is gone. I'm not on the roller coaster anymore. Now I just have to come to terms with the anger.

And that's where letting go and moving on comes in. I've got to find a way to do it. I haven't watched cooking shows for awhile. I tried watching one last night. Bridget goes to Belgium or something like that. Well, in Belgium they eat a lot of gluten. Turns out waffles, well duh, are the national food. Fortunately I've never really much wanted to visit Belgium. Cross number 94 on the list of places to someday go off the list. I suppose someone not understanding reading this would think I was just a big baby. So you can't eat everything Paula makes, you can eat some of it so shut up. What's your problem? The problem is every single time I see something I can't eat, I can't cook, I can't bake I'm angry and I'm hurt. And boy, let me tell you, I'm freaking surrounded by anger and hurt. It's everywhere, on TV, on the radio, in the paper, on the Internet, on billboards, in stores, everywhere. Here it is, and you can't ever have it again, nahhhh nah na nah nahhhhhh. Yeah, there damn well better be some big meaningful all encompassing outstandingly significant cosmic lesson in this. If this is just a joke guys, I'm not amused.

So I'm still casting around, trying to find a way to be happy with what my life is. I need some way to make it all right that doesn't involve me sneering at everyone who deigns to eat a croissant with their morning coffee, or breaking down in tears during a Burger Bust commercial. I have to find a way or I'm doomed to fail.

Irony

I stumbled across a bit of irony today. I was doing the usual early Sunday morning ROTW reading when I stumbled on a thread about fast food places. I live on a mountain. Most of the communities up here are small. Big Bear is the largest at somewhere around 15,000 full-time people. Course that number varies depending on who you ask. Anyway, most of the smaller communities up here in the San Bernardino Mountain communities don't rank a Taco Ding Dong or a Burger Bust.

Used to be those conversations about what new restaurant/fast food place may or may not be going in and where mattered to me. Obviously they don't anymore. I still live in fear of any food not personally cooked by myself from whole foods with known ingredients, so I could care less what restaurants are or aren't up here. Well, with the notable exception of Starbucks. I love decaf espresso coffee. I can't drink fully caffeinated coffee anymore. The "buzz" is physically painful to me now. So I've chosen to mitigate the damage by drinking decaf. A buzz is still possible, but you have to drink one hell of a lot of it. But I love Starbucks, and I love the variety of decaf coffee's they keep in stock. For variety they beat anything the stores up here have to offer in the way of bean varieties and availability of decaf. So I love Starbucks and wish them all the good luck in the world taking over this planet.

Later as I was standing over the stove slicing and frying potatoes in olive oil and scrambling eggs for my special Sunday breakfast I got to thinking about all the things I've put in my body over the years without thought or consideration. My body had been rejecting so much of it in it's own small subtle little way and I hadn't been listening. When it couldn't take it anymore and subtle wasn't getting through that's when things got ugly. It had to get as bad as it did for me to finally hear what my own body was telling me. I just hadn't been listening.

Just then a line from a Gordon Lightfoot song came to mind: "See the ocean wild and blue, think of all that's in her, she will not surrender to the likes of us, but then she must, they tell us, wise men tell us . . ." That's from a song called "Too Late For Praying." Mankind tends to view the ocean as this wide vast place, too vast to be affected by one single man. But we have misjudged the damage millions of humans over the course of a couple hundred years have done to the oceans, from over fishing to pollution to the dredging of inland water ways and bays. She's not invincible, she can be destroyed. Just as water wears away stone over time.

Ironically, I've been doing the same thing to myself all these years. I think perhaps I've viewed my body as some marvelous adaptable creature that enables my life and will always be here. Or maybe I just never thought. Yeah, most likely I never thought. Ironically if you had asked I would have said I'd treated it fairly well. I never did drugs or smoked or consumed more than one or two vodka martinis a week - dirty vodka martinis being my weakness. But in realty I've been damaging it daily for my entire life. Celiac Disease had to win; of course it did. I've been polluting my body all my life with basically toxic substances and not knowing, not caring, probably not wanting to know. I've been as careless with my body as the human race has been with the planet it lives on. Here I was so passionately aware of what we were doing to this planet, yet oblivious to what I was doing to my body. How does this planet ever stand a chance when humans are so busy blindly polluting their very own bodies?

I suspect that most everyone has that same schism, that same disconnect from their bodies that I had. They must. Otherwise how could the Taco Ding Dongs and Burger Busts of the world survive, grow and prosper? They'll recycle bottles and cans and talk endlessly about global warming, but in the end I wonder if there is truly anything we can do about the shape this planet is in when we won't even safeguard our own bodies?

Damn . . . well just DAMN!

Life is a double edged sword. I have come to that unequivocal conclusion. There are no exceptions, period. All of life is give and take, get and give, good and bad, dark and light. All good results come with unwelcome conclusions. In theory the good outweighs the bad, though I sometimes think good gets extra points just on account. Then there's also that mischievous brain function that makes it so much easier for the body to remember good and forget bad. Bet you remember more about your last orgasm than you do your last bout of indigestion? The body is programmed to remember and want the good stuff over and over again, and jettison the bad body memories in pursuit of even more good stuff. The deck is stacked.

So here I am. A 44 year old woman trying to read labels in grocery stores who is at that age where she is not only extremely near sighted, but also now far sighted. In short, there is no acceptable workable distance at which I can hold a label with teeny tiny itsy bitsy print and actually be able to read it. I take my reading glasses to the store now, and sometimes even that isn't enough. Anyway, having to read labels is a pain in the ass, and by most accounts bad. Still it's an eye opener when you read label after label and realize you do not recognize two thirds of the things in most canned, frozen, boxed and jarred foods. The more I read labels, the more articles I read, the more amazed I am by what we put in our bodies daily. I think that's both a good thing and a bad thing. I know it frightens me.

Reading labels is one of those distance creating exercises. Having read Gods knows how many labels in the last several weeks, I now look at the food in the grocery store from a whole different place. There is me, over here standing in a vacuum with the wind whistling through my ears, trying to eat a gluten free diet and not bore myself to tears, and over there is this whole ugly, messy, dark, frightening building full of chemical preservatives, flavor enhancers, anti-caking agents, soy additives and gluten thickeners. I'm afraid of food. This is a new experience for me. I've taken to shopping around the outside of the aisles these days in the dairy and meat and veggie places. I make an occasional forage into the aisles for rice noodles and club soda, but mostly I'm buying whole foods and making from that what I need. I spent an hour last weekend cooking up a batch of salsa. It's not bad and I know exactly what's in it, plus or minus the bug spray they used on the tomatoes. So I can spend five minutes reading labels on jarred salsa trying to pick the one that I hope truly has no gluten in it, or I can spend an hour making my own salsa from whole foods and know it's gluten free. Spend five minutes reading and then toss a jar in the cart - good. Spend one hour mixing raw ingredients and cooking - bad. Or is it the other way around?

I'm amazed now at all the people who unconsciously shuffle their way through the aisles tossing things into their cart. Had you told me I was one of them three months ago I would have denied it. I learned to shop cheap several years ago when my gross personal profit went down drastically. I never much changed my habits after that no matter how much was in my bank account. I thought I was a good, aware conscious shopper. But in truth I had no idea what I'd been putting in my cart and my body. I'm by no means standing up on a soapbox here and screaming "ORGANIC OR DIE". I don't care much for people like that. They're the ones that keep insisting I should eat Carob instead of chocolate . . . Pffthhhhhhh . . . But the sheer weight of chemicals and preservatives I've consumed in my life now saddens and scares me. The thought of driving by a McDonald's makes me want to hurl. I don't want to risk breathing in the putrid air of frying chemicals ever again. Yeah, I know they sell nice salads that are probably safe, but being that close to the chemical vats would make me puke, I just know it. I feel like I'm standing on the edge of a precipice watching train after train hurtle towards each other from opposite sides of the same track. And down there in the valley people are quietly saying in between crashes "I don't understand why these trains keep running into each other." There is an almost horrified resigned acceptance about it. This is the way it works after all. Corporations make convenient products for you, sparing you hours in the kitchen, and in return you pay them vast sums of money. You don't ask and they don't spill the details about that trade you've just signed off on. Good and bad. But again, which is which.

But that's not even the worst of it. No, not even. I feel wonderful these days. I'm told it will take six months to a year for all the side effects to work their way out of my body and for me to feel normal. I don't know what normal will feel like having never been normal, but it should be interesting. I no longer get bouts of extreme exhaustion. The other bodily effects have diminished. I'm more alert and have a better memory that I have had in quite some time. The huge vicious mood swings are gone. It's been such a relief. It's all good. Right?

I've been menopausal for about a year and a half. I've been told repeatedly by other women and doctors that my sex drive will diminish or disappear all together with menopause and it may or may not come back. That was the one cheery bit of news to come out of the whole surprise menopausal revelation. That was supposed to be a good thing. When you're a single woman, living on a mountain, surrounded by some of the scariest single men on earth, being horny is an exercise in terror and frustration. But it turns out menopause had the exact opposite effect on me it was supposed to have. Instead of my desire for hot sweaty dirty sex diminishing, it increased. Noticeably increased. When a 300 pound man with a gray beard down to his crotch in overalls with a stud in his ear starts to look good, well, Huston, we've got a BIG problem. Still I retained some hoped that as time when on I'd get some little relief from the ramped up sex drive. Sure enough, slowly last year, as I began to feel worse and worse the sex drive pretty much disappeared. I was thrilled. I had no idea at that point about the gluten intolerance. I just thought "Score, finally menopause is coming through for me with something I can use!"

Yeah . . . you can probably figure out the rest. DAMN! So, I feel better, healthier, stronger than I have in a long time, and now I'd willingly jump the bone of any man who can get it up and keep it there for more than 60 seconds. Yes, I cry myself to sleep most nights. The cord on my favorite vibration is starting to go too. It's just not fair! Why the hell can't I just be normal? Why can't I have a normal menopause where I spit on strange men and turn all my vibrators into foot massagers? My whole life seems so far to be an experience in being different. I used to think that was a good thing. I used to be proud of that. Now it's turned on me so abruptly and cruelly that I'd kill for the opportunity to unzip the pants of Jethro's second cousin's uncle. I feel so good I think I'm going to go cry now.

Good Bye Old Friends

Life has become a daily bargaining experience. How much am I willing to give up and what is non-negotiable?

I bought a new rolling pin and wooden spoons at the grocery store today. I accept that gluten can linger on some food utensils, particularly porous ones like wood. I'm willing to replace the wooden spoons and the rolling pin. Wooden spoons have always been a staple in my kitchen. I need them. I don't know how anyone cooks without them. Some of them were old friends I've had since the day I moved out on my own. I had them in all shapes and sizes and colors. Each was unique. The rolling pin was my first. I pretty much learned from cook books and cooking shows. The utensils and pots and pans shared in my triumphs and abysmal disasters. They were the only company I had in the kitchen as I was learning.

But okay, I can accept that they had to go. I'm willing to concede that one. And that is what it has become: how much am I willing to give up? Rather than live in fear of what might lurk in the wood grain of the spoons I agreed to toss them. But that's as far as I'll go today. I will not toss the virtually new pots. They are the first real semi-expensive matching set of good pots I have ever owned. I bought them last year. They were kind of a coming of age for me. I will not give them up.

I refuse to accept that gluten can linger on the surface of pots and pans and bowls. If it does? If I'm wrong? Too bad. I'm not willing to give them up right now. I have to draw the line somewhere don't you understand? It cannot have everything. I will not allow that. If that's not rational well so be it. I can only handle so much truth these days okay? There's what's true and rational and there's what I can handle.

I Think I Shall Never See

I think I shall never see
A more amazing snack than thee
Only three ingredients abide
and none be hidden inside.

A food the Gods surely have blessed
I have become addicted I confess
It reigns supreme in the snack aisle
And ever time I see it's brilliant facade I smile.

So hail all the mighty Frito
a creature of salt and corn
fear not the calories and sodium
for gluten free it was born.

All can consume it's goodness
that lovely golden crunchy chip.
Give praise to the mightly Frito
and bring forth the sour cream dip.

You were expecting Shakespeare?

NO - I Do NOT Have to Do What You Tell Me To Do

So this whole gluten free life that has been thrust upon me should be easy shouldn't it? I mean if I just avoid the damn stuff I'll be fine right? There are a couple classic, and fatal if not unobvious flaws to that belief.

Gluten is in so many things. Gluten gives things that have no texture texture. It gives things that need a nice rich caramel color color. Some genius out there even has the hair care gurus of the world convinced that wheat protein is good for your hair. Man, that was one hell of a sales job right there. Look up a few of your more expensive designer type shampoos and conditioners and you'll find some of them proudly proclaiming the enormous benefits of wheat protein for human hair. Never mind that it gives those of us with Gluten Intolerance hives or worse. It's good for you. Then there are the secondary ingredients on labels that mask what is truly in them; ingredients like "Natural Flavorings" or "Food Starch". I can either play Russian Roulette with Natural Flavorings or I can move on down the aisle.

I was in the one and only local organic food store yesterday. The owner and I are apparently going to become best friends whether we want to or not. I was somewhat befuddled by the number of organic and health food items that proudly proclaim on the label "Made from 100% Organic Wheat". Big whoop. I'm surrounded it seems by people who want to convince me that wheat is good for me. It's good in me, good for me and good on me. I live for the inevitable day when someone will tell me I'm UnAmerican because I don't eat wheat. How dare I not patronize the heavily subsidized wheat growers of America? Wheat and gluten have become an American way of life.

But that's the obvious stuff. The hard part is that its a lot like loosing my best friend all over again. I've known food longer than I knew Lilly. She and I met in kindergarten and she passed away in 1994. We knew each other for 27 years. For months after she passed I'd start to reach for the telephone to tell her something and then I'd remember and it would hurt all over again. In some ways this is the same.

All the stages of grief are there. And the toughest sneakiest one is denial. I've still got a big box full of gluten sitting on my dining room table. I need to get it out of the house. I know this. It needs to go to a food pantry or a starving waif or something. But it's been almost four weeks and I still can't let it out of the house. Blood tests diarrhea bloating and acid reflux be damned, maybe I'm not really gluten intolerant. So what if the last ten years of my life read like a text book for Celiac Disease? Doctors can be wrong. They're human. I also forget. I forget what it feels like twenty minutes after I ingest it. My brain has refused to retain the precise details of what gluten does to me. My mind is protecting me and damning me at the same time.

Then there's what I call the Rebel Factor. You see, ah, I have issues with authority. Well, it was inevitable really. How could I have turned out any different? I'm the youngest of four children. From the day I was born there were five people in this world who felt it was their God given right to tell me what to do, how to do it and when. Along about year five I got tired of that shit and nothing much has changed since.

So I came to be very good at circumventing authority, in a sweet passive aggressive sort of way. In my own defense, my family is big on passive aggressive. It's possible my mother invented it, but I'm not sure. If nothing else several of us have since gone on to perfect it.

These days, of course, I'm an adult and somewhat more aggressive than passive. I'm told that's a good thing. You be the judge. I've more or less come to terms with most of the necessary authority figures in my life. The boss always gets the last say because he pays the rent. I'm polite to the local Sheriff, particularly the cute one. I pay my bills on time because I like to be warm, have electricity and bath with water. Well, okay, so maybe me and the animal control lady had a little go around, but that's largely because she likes to lay the whole authority trip thing on really thick, she's anal as hell and she's an ugly BUTT.

But I digress. I'm an adult, but inside there is still this small person who doesn't like being told what to do. There is this person who would rather die than be forced to do something someone else thinks she should. This is why I've never gone on a diet. I instinctively knew how badly that would go. I cannot stomach someone else telling me what to eat and how much. I don't do precise measurements and ounces and calorie counting. I cannot deal with people who feel the need to define and measure every movement and moment in their lives. But here I am, being told what to eat and what not to eat. The rebel child in my is pretty much freaking out these days. She has so not come to terms with this. I'm my own worst enemy right now and I know it.

So it is a struggle. I can get the mechanics of this new life down. I can learn to read labels. I can learn how to cook all over again. I understand intellectually what is going on. But I just can't cope. I don't want to be one of those people who measures out and regulates their life. I see some of the people on the Celiac boards and forums and they make my skin crawl. After their name they have a list of diagnosis along with the date they were diagnosed with this malady or that one. I'm told that people with Celiac's Disease are more prone to other food intolerances and allergies and auto immune issues. Well I don't want to be told what I have to be. I refuse to be one of them! It's my body. It's mine! They can believe if they want that their lives have gotten smaller and their choices fewer, but I can't live like that. I don't know how to live like that.

Just Holding On for Now

I have yet to understand why people create blogs. But tonight I began to get a sense of why someone might. Well, this someone.

It always seemed like an odd concept and I even gave it a shot once, but, well, I had nothing to say and no reason to say it. Sure I have friends, on-line and off and email lists and boards where I read and post, but why be this lone voice on a page talking to yourself? Why would that appeal to anyone?

The answer for me came in a half second tonight when I screamed at no one in particular "Why. Why do people and things just keep getting taken away? When do I get something back?"

Once again the cats looked annoyed and ran for cover and the dog just cowered. That's what they always do when I scream at the walls. All this took place while I was boiling the lovely corn pasta I later choked down for dinner. If you don't have to eat corn pasta, my advice is don't. It reminds me vaguely of plastic. Remember this if you remember nothing else I say: Wheat is a miracle, never take it for granted. Maybe that's where I went wrong? Don't make my mistakes.

I've lost people I loved, and I've lost so many things in the last 15 years; things large and huge and small. I've lost the sense I had once that I would always land safely on my feet. I know now you don't always land feet first. Sometimes you crash and burn and it takes you years to get over the injuries. I have an odd list of the things I miss most. This is in no particular order: My father, my couch, my innocence, the ring my parents gave me twenty years ago that I sold so I could pay the rent and eat that month, and the first car I ever bought.

But what ran through all those years, what was always there to turn to when something or someone was taken away, what never let me down, what always sat quietly in the cold dark to comfort me, the one thing that I never realized how much I needed was food. There was always food. The ultimate drug. While I ate, all the pain, the loss, the grief, all of it took a back seat to reveling in the food for that moment. Lovely french bread, orange chicken, cakes, cookies, ice cream cones, pancakes, warm waffles . . . the list just goes on. And now everyday I realize I've lost yet another food on the list for friends, comrades, comforters, sympathizers.

I am gluten intolerant. Such simple words. They sound so simple. I'm intolerant of gluten. I can't eat gluten. I was born with a couple bad genes and now they've reared their ugly heads and told me in certain and precise measure that I can't have gluten anymore. Huh. So what's the big deal? Well, it is in everything. Gluten: it's not just for bread anymore. It's in wheat flour, it's in barely, it's in rye. And it shows up in some variation in a third of the foods in the grocery store. They put wheat in shampoos for Goddess sake! Anything brown is suspect. Anything thick is suspect. Anything low calorie is suspect.

My favorite place so far to find wheat was in the store brand of Lite Maple syrup I had in the pantry. Trust me, I had no illusions about that lite syrup tasting just like the real thing, but I liked the taste. It suited me. I bought it because it fit into my life in it's own sideways little cheat of a way. It made me feel good to know I was cutting out approximately twelve calories every time I used it, yet it still tasted like the syrup I grew up on and it was cheap. But now I have to buy the real stuff; 100% maple syrup, no additives no preservatives. Though it's debatable that I'll ever need maple syrup again since I can't eat pancakes waffles or oatmeal anymore. Yeah, I guess that one is a bit of a draw. That happens sometimes. What I can no longer eat is made irrelevant by something else I can no longer eat anyway.

Last night I went into the kitchen and stood there, staring at the frig. I could not figure out what to make for dinner. Every option, every meal I'd ever eaten was no longer an option. I paced up and down the kitchen floor for a few minutes, then turned off the light and went into the living room and sat down in the dark to watch TV all night. I never did get around to dinner. About ten thirty my stomach started to growl, but I ignored it and went to bed. Some nights I'm too frustrated to eat. Some nights I'm too heartbroken. Some nights I'm too angry. Some nights I seem to want to punish myself. For what I'm not entirely sure.

Then there are nights like tonight, where I convince myself it's not that bad, and I pump up my enthusiasm and venture out onto untrodden territory. So I decided to try the extremely expensive corn pasta I bought at the organic store last week. One hundred percent pure corn. No wheat stalks were shafted in the making of this pasta. I made a lovely garlic sauce with sour cream and butter and sauteed some shrimp. I now deeply regret dragging the shrimp into the whole fiasco. The shrimp deserved a better end than to wind up on top a plate of corn pasta. I feel like I cheated the shrimp out of a decent end to their scrumptious little lives. See, there I go again. I live for food. I love to cook. I love to bake. And now I'm reduced to eating overpriced plastic pasta.

And don't bother with the letters and emails. I fully realize that if this weren't so bone chillingly pathetic it might even be funny in an ironical, twisted, Machiavellian sort of way. You don't need to point out to me the insanity of my life. Its been brought home in a manner more pointed and vicious than any one person who reads this could ever muster.

So okay, let me get this straight. I'm a forty something single woman with no children, no parents, a dog, two cats and bird, and I live alone on a freaking mountain with no boyfriend, and now I can't eat bread. What exactly is the point to life?

So then why did I decide to create a blog? I realized tonight, sitting in front of the fire, crying my eyes out that no one was going to understand. There was no one to explain it to. I could say to people "I've lost my best friend". But can you imagine the embarrassment and shock when they ask my friends name and I say "Food". You're not supposed to love food you know. Not really.

So it came to me, if I can tell no one, if not a soul will understand, than perhaps I need to tell myself. Perhaps I need to type it all up safely and neatly somewhere just for me. Perhaps I need to be my own best friend. Yeah, yeah, life is a journey not a destination. Blah blah blah blah. Fine. But I can't shake this feeling that food was a better friend to me than I'll ever be to myself. I see the arrows on the highway. I know which way they're pointing. That doesn't mean I have to enjoy the journey. I reserve the right to go kicking and screaming till my lungs give out. Fine. I'll attempt to create a "healthy" relationship with food and with myself. LIKE I HAVE A FREAKING CHOICE!

Next installment: No I Don't Have To! - or why I'm such a freaking rebel