My Awesome Weekend

It snowed Friday afternoon and into the night, giving us about an inch of snow. When I picked Cam up from school on Friday, there was already a good dusting of snow. And for whatever reason, he decided he need to clear the "roads." So he ran into the house, found his toy snowplow, and started clearing roads on the sidewalk. The funniest part: he was saying he was clearing the roads to Camelot (no, I am NOT making this up), so he was Camelot's snow plow. So we played in the falling snow for about half an hour, because the wind wasn't blowing, so it felt positively balmy out, despite the snow.



Saturday, we spent more time outside, clearing more roads. Though it was a tad bit more difficult, since the wet, fluffy snow that had fallen had frozen into the kind of snow that doesn't want to be messed with. The kind that crunches with every step you take. And laughs when your snow plow tries to break through. Luckily, we had something of a staging area where his trucks could work without the snow being in the way. (Can you see the payloader in the bit of dirt? He was loading the dirt into a dump truck, taking it over to a bit of snow, and dumping it. It was "sand" to help clear the road.)



I'm still making headway in eating better. Last night, I had homemade sloppy joes. Before, if I wanted sloppy joes, I would buy burger, Manwich, and hamburger buns. But in my healthy eating, hamburger buns are obviously off the table. And with the second ingredient in Manwich being HFCS, and the third being just corn syrup, well, I don't really want to eat that either. So my sloppy joes took a bit longer and a little bit more effort to prepare. No problem. (BTW, have I mentioned just how thankful I am that I enjoyed cooking/knew how to cook before I started on this food adventure?) I wish I had had a red bell pepper, to replace half of the green bell pepper that I put in the sauce. That's my only complaint. Too much green bell pepper taste. Not bad, I say. Oh, and that I had put the onions in to cook sooner, because they're still crunchy, and I'm still not a fan of crunchy onions.

Sloppy Joes

8oz tomato sauce
1 C ketchup (I used HFCS-free stuff. One of these days I'll learn to make my own!)
1/4 small onion, diced
1/2 small green pepper, diced (or 1/4 green and 1/4 red)
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp celery seed
1/2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp mustard (oops, I forgot this in mine. Oh, well!)
1 pound ground beef

Brown the ground beef.
Add onion, pepper(s), and garlic and cook until soft (or to desired crunch level).
Add remaining ingredients, mix.
Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 10-20 minutes.


I also made my own buns. The recipe can be found here. They make an excellent GF/low carb alternative to hamburger buns and with the strong flavour of the meat sauce, you really can't tell that they aren't your typical buns.

what i miss

Mostly I miss being able to eat whatever I felt like. Yeah, I always had to worry about what might disagree with my stomach - but that was the thing, sometimes I would eat something and be fine, then eat it a day or week or month later, and be sooo much LESS than fine. Now I can't pick up anything in the "inner aisles" of the grocery store without scanning the ingredient list - some of the things in the outer aisles need to be scanned, too. So I guess what I miss most is my ignorance? It's easy to be ignorant. Now I have to make good choices or pay the price (nausea, head ache, general malaise).

But for specifics:

I miss oreos.
I miss being able to whip up a batch of cookies or cupcakes.
I miss pie.
I miss macaroni and cheese.
I miss tortillas. (Have yet to have a taco in the last two months that doesn't have my entire face and both hands covered in taco-stuff.)
I miss being able to buy a box/bag of "food" for lazy food preparation.
I miss sammiches.


But it's getting better. It's getting easier. When I see a picture of a sandwhich, I recoil a bit, because I know how terrible and awful I would feel if I ate it. Christmas at my parents' was a fun exercise in staying gluten free. I didn't want to be miserable, but my mom had made poppyseed bread, which is my absolute favourite! so I kept joking about different processsed food stuffs - well, if it has gluten in it, at least I'll be able to enjoy the poppyseed bread because I'll already be feeling miserable from this! Luckily (unluckily?) nothing I ate had gluten in it (except for some gravy at a HyVee food court. oops!)

So, I've been gluten free (except for two mishaps) since Dec. 1. And I've had very little in the way of any sort of grain in that time, too. I've made steps toward eliminating (or severely cutting back) the presence of processed food-stuff in my diet. I've almost completely eliminated franken-foods like hydrogenated vegetable(*cough*SOY*cough*) oils and HFCS.

Go me!

homecoming

As much as I sometimes want to punch my brother in the mouth (he's a staunch libertarian, I'm very left-wing liberal), I still love him... Kind of.

And today, he is starting his journey home from serving in Afghanistan!! I'm so happy for him and his family. I know it's been rough for his wife and three kids; hopefully he's done with deployments. As for me, I know I'll be sleeping easier at night, knowing he's not having bullets whizzing by his head (Once heard from my mom that he said "It's just like TV, you're running and you can see the bullets hitting the ground" OMG!)

A bit of good news as an early Xmas present. :)

wheat!

So I've been off wheat for two weeks now. And I have to say, I'm doing great! I've also severely cut back on my refined sugar and caffeine intake.

I've gone from having bowel issues (sorry, TMI) to having none. Well, except when I used apparently contaminated garlic powder (Great Value from Walmart. "May contain traces of wheat, soy, etc, etc). Stupid garlic powder :(

I'm sleeping better. I used to wake up sooo groggy and I wanted nothing more than to crawl back in bed and stay there. I had about 4 hours a day where I felt energized. Now, I wake up and while I still want to crawl back into bed and stay there (because my thermostat is set on 60 so my house is cold, but my bed is WARM WARM WARM), I wake up fairly quickly and easily. I'm energized All. Day. Long.

And most importantly: I'm not constantly hungry! I used to be hungry ALL the time. I would eat, then twenty minutes later, I'd be starving. Now I stay full! It's awesome. I had dinner two hours ago. I'm still full. Yes!

where i've been and where i'm going

I haven't been anywhere. Especially here at the blog. It would be nice if I could say "Oh, I was SOOOO busy doing homework, I just had no time to blog." But that's not true, as my newest addiction to Pinterest would show. So, truthfully... I've been thinking about my life and going "it's not THAT interesting, so why blog about it?" Really. A lot of my life feels like it's the same thing day in and day out. How many posts can I make about the hilarious stuff that comes out of Cam's mouth? Too many, probably.

I've been thinking about the point of having this blog, too. I started it as a way to work out my spirituality (and get some feedback on it), but my spirituality has changed since I started this blog over two years ago. Hell, it's changed since last year, since the spring, since the summer. I've lost a lot of my religious trappings, and have settled into a fairly laissez-faire spirituality. What I believe is too personal/individual to be called a religion, I think.

When I changed my blog from Witch at Church to One Witch's Story, it was so I could write about my life, which included spiritual beliefs. And my story is changing, I guess. I have self-diagnosed myself with Celiac disease, on the basis of a high incidence of gallbladder disease (my gallbladder was FULL of stones when I was 18 and started developing problems. Had it removed 5 years ago next week) and gluten allergies and a statistically relevant incidence of kidney stones (had a few stones in my right kidney, which were taken care of surgically two years ago, still have one hanging out in my left kidney) and gluten allergies.

So I'm going on a gluten-free diet. A grain free diet, really, because I'm planning on starting the Primal diet near the end of this month (no grains, no legumes, no refined sugar, limited dairy.) And of course, I'm dragging Camden along for the ride. I'm taking him to the doctor next week so he can be tested for gluten allergies/intolerance. For myself, I'm doing the self-test (day 2 and going strong!) where I cut it out for a few weeks, then reintroduce it to see how I feel. I can't do that with Cam, though, because his daycare provides meals and won't let the kids bring in their own food... Which means that feeding him gluten free stuff at home then having him get it at school REALLY defeats the purpose. But if I can get the test (hopefully) saying that he had allergies or an intolerance, the school will provide the gluten free food (or let me pack his breakfast/lunch/snack, I'm not sure). Woo-hoo. Wish us luck for a positive, will you?

Also, I got everything in for grad school. My application was sent to the review board yesterday, so I'm playing the waiting game to hear back. I'm deathly nervous, but I'm trying not to think about it too much. Everything will work out in the end, I'm sure.

grad school

Today, I turned in the last bits and bobs of my graduate school application for the MAE program. It should be noted that I only decided to apply less than two weeks ago; everyone was certain there was no way in hell I could get everything in on time. But I did. So HAH!

Reviews of applications begin on Tuesday. Here's to hoping that I'm accepted!

city museum

I made plans several weeks ago to go to St. Louis and talk to UMSL about their teaching program. And because I've been to St. Louis many times for school field trips, I know that there are quite a few fun things to do. About a week before we went, Camden and I sat down at the computer and looked at pictures and videos of the different places I knew: the science center, the magic house, the zoo, and the city museum.

From pictures and videos, the city museum was the obvious choice. Tunnels to crawl through, slides to slide down, gorgeous artwork, a bus perched precariously on the rooftop, etc etc! The city museum is a cross between a museum and a GIANT indoor playground. (Almost) Everything is hands on.

Of course, the week before we went, Camden came down with the pox. I was really worried that he wouldn't be able to go... Thankfully, however, he was deemed contagious no longer! So off we went!

My trip to UMSL was a waste, because it turns out that everything they had to tell me I could have found online. (Just want to say that when I called, the person I talked to said it was very hard to explain over the phone, and I should schedule an appointment to come in and talk. Thanks, person!)

Then on to the city museum! (And lucky for us, rooftop access was FREE that day. YES!)






A slide made of rollers (like rolling pins). Very bumpy and very uncomfortable! Camden loved it, though.



The fossil, bug, and skeleton room. The walls were covered with tons of displays of pinned insects. There was a nifty diorama of dinosaurs and a jungle area. And there were skeletons, including a cat skeleton, which was both cool and kind of creepy.



If it wasn't for all the other fun and awesome stuff, I'm fairly certain Camden would have stayed in this room much longer than he did.



They also had a room of architecture elements (I'm assuming they were pulled from buildings about to be torn down). Camden was not nearly as enamored with this room as my mother or I.



This column is in the food court area. Cam has a thing for frilled lizards, so he absolutely loved it. It hovered over us as we sat and had some snacks (we were planning on lunch, but the food was ridiculously over priced... What can I say? I'm cheap!)



The roof! See the school bus? The front end is hanging over the side of the building... 11 stories up. Have I mentioned I'm terrified of heights?



Oh, there's also a giant sculpture of a praying mantis. Why? I have no idea!



Do you see me? I crawled up the tiny stairs into the wire cage, which is perched on the roof. Again, I'm not good with heights, so I was pretty shaky the entire time. LOL It was fun anyway!