Happy Thanksgiving--and new post

My new post is up on "get born". In which I am neurotic, per usual.
xo
-L

Blogging for get born

Finally, I write something...somewhere else. I'll be blogging for the awesome "get born magazine" on the 25th of every month. This month's post is up at http://getbornmag.com/2011/10/turning/.

Free to Be

Long story short: My kids have tested "probable" for allergies. And definite for yeast overgrowth. And mitochondrial dysfunction. So we're going on an elimination diet.

What's out:

• Sugar
• All sugar-subs and sweeteners, save Stevia
• Yeast of all kinds
• All fermented foods (raw apple cider is okay)
• Alcohol
• Gluten
• Wheat, rye, and the like
• Dairy
• Chicken eggs
• Cucumbers
• Peanuts, pistachios
• Starches (except in very small amounts, for cooking--1TB or less)
• White potatoes
• Melons

What's still in:

• Vegetables (except cukes)
• Meat
• Nuts (except peanuts and pistachios)
• Duck eggs
• Unsweetened almond, soy, or coconut milk
• GF flours
• Legumes
• Whole grains
• Sweet potatoes, yams, tubers
• Stevia
• Fruit (except melons)

This is going to be a challenge, to say the least. But the kids are taking it fairly well. They are having the most difficulty with the idea that they can't participate in school treats; eventually I'll be able to plan ahead for that type of thing and send them something for themselves, but at this point, I'm not that well prepared and there's only a week left. Of course, learning young that eating isn't a necessary part of socializing will probably serve them well.

For breakfast, I made almond-flour pancakes, following the recipe in The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook. The only flour I have at the moment is Bob's, which the author does not recommend, but I figured since pancakes are easy to adjust if they end up too runny or thick, I could risk it, and it turned out fine. I ended up adding some almond milk because they did turn out much thicker than I wanted them, and I substituted a few drops of liquid stevia for the agave nectar, and used alcohol-free vanilla flavoring rather than extract (which contains alcohol). Since we can't have syrup, I boiled some frozen raspberries and fresh blackberries in a little water, with a few drops of Stevia, a pinch of arrowroot starch, and a bit more vanilla. Next time, I'll try using coconut flour, rather than the starch, to thicken the syrup.

Quitting

Yesterday, someone posted this poem on the Childhood and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation support group forum that I read.

Don’t Quit!


When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low, and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
when he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow,
You may succeed with another blow.

Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit,
It's when things seem worst, that
You Must Not Quit.

- C. W. Longenecker

Yeah, I've seen it before, and maybe it's trite. But reading it again (in the waiting room of the pediatric psychiatrist's office, fwiw), I felt a huge amount of tension drain out of me. Because really, this is the deal. We get what we get, and we can't necessarily change that. We just get to decide whether or not to quit.
 
I am not such a great finisher of things, but that isn't the same as quitting. This probably explains why I have so many half-finished projects and half-read books lying around. It's definitely my double-sided coin. Because there are things I should probably let go of, but I'm not so good at the quitting. But, I am trying to learn to let go now and then.

Snow Day

It's snowing again. And it's funny: When I was a kid and we lived out in BFE, I hated hated hated it. And now?

All I want to do is go lie flat in the middle of a field, and watch the sky fall on me. What I wouldn't give for an hour of that silence.

I wonder what I'll be missing tomorrow? I wonder if I'll ever catch up with my own heart?

Also: I wonder if I was born ridiculously melodramatic, or if it was something in the water?

Clouds Move In

You know those films that use a special technique to speed up time, so that the sun races across the sky and clouds throw themselves around, helter-skelter, and one second it's a beautiful day and the next it's a thunderstorm and the next all the flowers have died and the next a rainbow flashes and the next--and the next--and the next--

That's what it's like, living with this child.

Hangovers suck

And by hangovers, I'm referring to book hangovers. You know, when you get so caught up in a story that you can barely think about anything else, jump back into the pages the second you finish work/dinner/putting the kids to bed/whatever, and then feel adrift when you turn the last page.

If only I could so completely immerse myself in my own work. So that I could finish it.

Full Disclosure

So, I realized why this blog has been gathering cobwebs.

In a past life, I had a blog that I wrote in quite a lot. It was one of those lovely pseudonymous places, where I could write about just about anything, without worrying about stepping on toes or getting myself into hot water. And that had its advantages.

This new blog, though, has my identity attached to it. That's sort of necessary these days, it seems, if you're going to write and market yourself and yadda yadda yadda. So I figured I would talk about writing and editing and all the stuff that goes into being a full-time, freelance, self-employed word geek, but I would leave the personal stuff pretty much out of it. It would be professional, is what it would be. Which is great and all...

Except.

Turns out, most of the stuff that goes into the profession of writing is kind of...how do I put this?

Messy.

Every time something seemed worth writing down, every time it seemed like something someone might care about--something I might care about--I hesitated. Because connecting myself with it in such a transparent way seemed too uncomfortable. Too messy.

God, how we love to hide our messes.

Lately, though, I've been thinking that maybe this approach is flawed.

When I was a kid, a friend once told me that she preferred spending time at my house, where things tended to be a little out of place, a little rough around the edges, as compared to a third friend's house. "I feel like I'm in a museum over there," she explained. "I feel like I shouldn't touch anything. At your house, I feel like it's okay to just hang out and be myself."

I want people to marvel at my pristine house, everything in its place, my granite counter tops, my gleaming floors, the artsy family photos in precise geometric position on my Ralph Lauren walls. I want you to be astounded at my awesomeness, how I manage to keep it all together, get it done, juggle those swords, never break a sweat.

Can you think of anything more boring?

Here's a crazy thought. What if I was honest with you instead? What if this blog could be just what I wanted it to be: the things that make me want to write. The things that I write about. The awesomeness that is freelancing--and the crappiness of it. Less sugar coating, more gooey center. A good story.

Come on in, grab a cup of coffee, tell me how you've been. Don't mind the mess.