Just So You Know...

I've been feeling insular lately. This must be a time for looking inward. Perversely, I'm also craving connections with others and yet feeling the impotency of those cravings. Connecting is hard. And risky. I'm really not a good judge of character.

Mostly I think it's just that we've all been sick with minor, niggling life-changing complaints for months now. We've been shut up here for far too long. It doesn't do much for my thinking. It skews my perspective and brings out the misanthropist in me.

The walls of our house are covered in mould. The roof is in poor condition; the gutters rusted through. I worry that the damp in the roof and walls might affect the wiring and cause a fire. I clean off the mould and within a week or two it's back. I don't even make it to the other side of the room before it's time to start again. I've been asking the real estate agent to fix it for years. I probably shouldn't say this, but what the hell; in my experience, it takes a special kind of asshole to be successful in that line of work. (I'm sure that that real estate agent you know is totally an exception though.)

Ly is going through that mandatory clingy stage that makes it hard to get things done. Not to mention that she's napping through dinner and then keeping us awake well into the night.

That Guy can't shake the lingering effects of the last cold and has been away a lot on virtual orc hunting trips. He tells us they are not so much bad as misunderstood. I pretend to care. I don't do a very good job.

Our home ed choir performed in public for the first time. It was a lantern parade to mark the winter solstice. The singing felt good. In the middle of our performance, Ly reached the limits of her endurance and began to protest, so I breastfed a grumpy, sleepy 12.5kg toddler standing up while performing in front of an audience for the first time in a dozen years. I should put that on my CV. I would if I actually had a CV. The parade felt slightly surreal, and was quite beautiful. Come back light. We miss you.

Also, Ly has been playing in the spice cupboard again and smells faintly of curry and cinnamon.

A Gluten Free Ramble and Oddly Unrelated Photos

Yesterday was one of those days; not bad really, just lacking focus. To be honest, it's been a challenging couple of months. We all tag-teamed a stomach bug over Easter - first from/to another family we often share experiences/viruses with and then amongst ourselves. On the tail end of that and feeling a little worn and delicate, we made the rare decision to buy some gluten and dairy free take away food and found that it was most decidedly not. It was in some ways an elucidating experience, but not one I would rush to repeat.

​We're not sure of the precise origin of the contamination, but we were left in no doubt that we had been poisoned. I started to feel nauseous half way through my coffee, which I discarded. Within fifteen minutes, anxiety held sway.

​At first we thought that it was a consequence of That Guy accidentally ordering caffeinated coffee, but I soon began to experience the chest pains, breathlessness and foggy head that I have come to associate with a gluten or casein (from dairy) food reaction.

That night I was buzzing until after 4am. Ni too found herself nauseous and trapped in the old boisterousness that had once held her captive. Ly cried piteously in her sleep.

My symptoms continued for most of the week that followed, the unrelenting anxiety peaking periodically, throughout the day, in full blown anxiety attacks. Ni struggled to find peace and continues to feel mildly nauseous. Ly who had never eaten gluten or cow dairy before, changed overnight from a happy, calm, sometimes grumpy, sometimes demanding toddler to being an often miserable little person caught in a cycle of screaming tantrums and exhausted distressed comfort feeding. That lasted for nearly four weeks and ended as suddenly as it began. Our sleep routines have still not returned to normal.

We've decided that there are just too many people who see a gluten free diet as an annoying fad for us ever to be able to safely eat out, even where it is claimed that food is gluten and dairy free. Not to mention the fact that gluten is so pervasive in our food supply that it really is difficult to avoid. I still get caught out myself occasionally. Most people know that gluten is found in wheat, but often that's as far as their knowledge goes. So when you ask, "Is there gluten in this?", it's difficult to know if they really understand. It's in soy sauce, malt and many seasoning powders or syrups. It might also be found in yeast, vinegar or vanilla essence. Do I really trust the person serving me to know all of that when they assure me that my food is free from gluten?

That was all by way of saying that yesterday was one of those days, but I did manage to take half an hour to roll over a couple of logs, get in people's (and kitty's) faces and play with my new toy. It's a mobile phone macro/wide angle lens that I ordered from Photojojo after seeing it in action on Schmutzie's Phoneography site. The photos you see here were taken with the lens attached to my iPhone 3GS through the Hipstamatic app. They're not the best photos, but they make me want to rub my hands together; give a throaty giggle and mumble something about the possibilities - oh, the possibilities. Muahahahaha!

Also, just while I'm complaining, I want to take the opportunity to say, it's been REALLY cold here - the coldest autumn on record. And I really don't like it. That is all.