lyrics.

Sometimes after I hear a new song on the radio, it gets stuck in my head. Sometimes I don't catch all of the words, just the tune and stuttering of syllables. I try to sing my way through it to try to find those missing words. Sometimes I forget them altogether and I’m stuck with:

da dah da dah dada

da dahda da dahda da daaaaaah dahhhh

hmmm da dah dah dada da

da dah daaah dada da hmmm  daaaa dah

I’m a resourceful person. I’m a creative person. I think outside the box, and I make up my own words.
                        I feel the night come down
                        darkness, and I will come find you.

hmmm da dah dah dada da

there’s just something about the night time.

And then I hear that song again, and the words are wrong, and the tune isn’t quite what I remembered, and I wish they wrote it my way because it stuck much better in my head.

Close your eyes. Open your mind.

in other news...

Why can I no longer post comments from this account?
:(

gluten.

WARNING: this is a serious rant, and has a bit of 'adult' language. I don't care if you like this post or not. I don't care if my grammar sucks, or if things are misspelled. I need to get this rage the HELL out of my system, and this is my way of doing so.

I haven’t eaten gluten since October of last year. It’s not because it isn’t tasty- I miss the hell out of gluten-filled food. It is because I get really sick when I eat it.

I haven’t eaten gluten since October of last year. That’s a lie. I’ve eaten gluten about 5 times since then, and each time I have been violently ill. One time, I ate two bites of breaded shrimp. (do you know how hard it is to watch other people eat your favourite foods that you KNOW you can’t eat any more?) I felt my stomach turn while we were in the restaurant. I did my best to maintain my composure, I clenched my fists through the cramping, and I swallowed back my urge to vomit. I was shaking and sweating, we paid our bills and left. I drove a friend home, and normally we’d sit in the driveway and chat. This time I didn’t even pull in to the drive way. I didn’t even put the car in park. I drove home quickly and ran to the bathroom. I vomited so hard I got a nose bleed. And then I shit myself. That’s right. I’m a grown woman, and I shit myself.

That’s what gluten does to me. The same thing happened when I was on vacation in Mexico, except I ate more than two bites. I thought that what I was eating was gluten-free, but there was some mix-up with the order. After drunkenly devouring an entire plate of food, I was hit like a Mack truck with a wall of “oh no” on my insides. I spent that night in the bathroom on the toilet with a bucket on my lap. At one point that night I tried to shower because I had vomited on myself. I never made it back to my bed, and I spent the next two days lying naked on my hotel room floor in a pile of my own ‘gluten intolerance.’ Yay vacation...

I used to get sick all the time. That’s why I stopped eating gluten. My sister tried a gluten-free diet and it seemed to really work for her, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I am a student. I don’t work during the school year. I work in the summer, and save as much as I can. My parents (thank God) pay my tuition. OSAP helps with the rest. I’ve been to college for three years, and I just finished my second year of university. I used to be able to make ends meet financially. Used to.

Now, a loaf of gluten-free bread costs $6-9, depending on how much you like the texture of Styrofoam. Now, a box of gluten-free cereal costs $7, and that isn’t for the family size. Want to go eat at a restaurant? Good luck. Fast food? HA. Nice try. Grab something quick on the way out the door? That works if you just want an apple. Want some cookies? Be prepared to spend AT LEAST $4 for a box of 12. And those are the gross kind. The good kind are $7/12pk.

Do I need to start taking out more OSAP? Should I cut down the features on my cell phone? Ask Mum and Dad for more help? What do I do? Government to the rescue!

A friend of mine informed me that the government offers a tax break for people with celiac disease. You can claim your groceries as a health expense (or something like that, Dad looked into the details for me) and get money back to make up for the cost of living gluten-free. All you have to do is get a formal diagnosis, and you’re set! :D 

Here’s the fun part! Guess what’s involved with a formal diagnosis? I asked my doctor today, and this is what she told me:

“Well you can go and get the blood test done. It isn’t very effective, so it isn’t worth much. I don’t even think the government would take that as proof. The best test to do is a biopsy. They take a camera to guide a pincer through your colon and intestines, and take a few samples. The samples get sent to a lab, and they can tell you if you have celiac disease. This test is only 75% effective. And all you have to do is eat a gluten-filled diet for two weeks before the procedure. Want me to set it up?”

EXCUSE ME? A gluten-FILLED diet for two weeks? And it is only SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT effective? So TWENTY FIVE percent of the time, a person WITH celiac disease will not receive a diagnosis?

I thanked my doctor for her time, and left. I nearly started to cry.

Fun fact: eating large quantities of gluten can cause intestinal and colon cancer in people with celiac disease. I wonder if they’d take that as proof.

<is crying now.>

quiet.

My house is quiet. It used to be busy and loud, but now it is quiet. There are the same number of people living here: 2 parents, 1 sister, 2 bambinos and my lovely self. There is significantly less noise.

Sometimes Sister takes the kids on day trips. We’re reno-ing, so it is a lot easier for them to play if they have access to more than just one room... and a bathroom that isn’t doubling as a kitchen. It gets quiet when she’s gone, even if Mum and Dad are still around. We used to talk at meal times, all the time. Used to.

I don’t know what’s happening. They don’t seem to like to talk anymore. Dad comes home from work, and Mum makes him lunch. We all sit around the table (at this point, around the coffee table in the tv room) and there are the few ‘how are things at the office?’... ‘oh, that’s nice,’

 comments, and then the silence comes. We eat in silence. We sit in silence. My mind is screaming on the inside “TALK TO ME.” I worry that my twenty-something-drama annoys them, so once I’ve blithered for a few minutes I become silent as well.

What happened? Where did the conversation go? We used to talk at meal times. All the time. Used to.

The rain is tapping on my window, at least I don’t feel so alone.

secret.

My heart swells when I look at you

I see the future in your eyes

I am warm when I’m with you

I love the way you feed me lies.

I’m gullible. I believe people too easily. I see the good in everyone, and I give out second chances like a contagious cold flowing through a kindergarten class. I tell myself time and time again that I need to be more guarded. Put myself first. Don’t give in.

I get walked on, stomped on. I am not a welcome mat. I am not a welcome mat. So why do people walk all over me? I let them.

I let people in too easily. Secretly, I just want everyone to love me.

change.

I feel unhappy, I am so sad
I lost the best friend that I've ever had.

She is my baby, I love her so

But it's too late now, I've let her go.

We’re going through changes. 

-Kelly and Ozzy

We’re renovating the kitchen. We are in dire need of a new kitchen. I’ve lived in this house my whole life, and I only remember the kitchen ever looking this way. I talked to Mom about it. I guess we’ve renovated once before. But that was long ago and I don’t remember it at all.

I live in the basement of my parents’ house. We share the kitchen, but I have my own bed room/living room/bathroom downstairs. Many changes have happened in the house recently. For example, a bed room, living room and bathroom exist downstairs now (har har). I moved down to give my sister more space upstairs. She lives with us too, with her two beautiful kids.

Sister took the kids shopping for outfits for an upcoming special occasion. Dad was at work, and Mom and I got to work on the kitchen. Dad removed the baseboards last night, so we could start removing the wallpaper this morning. Sister and the kids came home while the kitchen wallpaper was...less than finished. Bear (nephew, 2 ½ years old) has been having some grumpy days recently. He’s potty training, and he doesn’t understand why his little sister Squidgee seems to get more attention than he does (she’s breastfed, which means she sits on Mommy’s lap by herself periodically throughout the day, which Bear LOATHES).

Bear tends to lose his mind about the littlest things. For example, if he wants a drink in the blue cup, and you give him the blue cup with a green lid... you have wronged him. You have wronged him, and you will feel his horrifying scream-his-two-year-old-face-off-temper-tantrum wrath. When he woke up this morning, he realized that Grampa (Dad) had BROKEN the kitchen. Oh no. How very sad. After shopping, he came home to see myself and Gramma (Mom) DESTROYING the walls. Grampa was draining the fish tank so that it would be easier to move out of the kitchen. Bear started losing his mind.

            No no no no! That my shishtank! Shishtank stay in titchin!

He cried and cried and screamed and cried. Then I realized something: He’s just like me. We both don’t do well with change. His grumpy days started when all of a sudden he had a baby sister. All of a sudden he was a big boy. Big boys pee on the potty and sleep in their own beds all by themselves – a huge change from his toddler days.

I realized that even though I get frustrated with his exceptionally loud (and occasionally violent) tantrums, I have to sympathize with the little bugger. I get uneasy with change. I usually tend to avoid it. But as an adult, I also understand change. I knew that when Bear was born I’d be an aunt. I knew that when the three of them moved in, I’d have a bit more responsibility and it would be a bit more hectic around here. He’s just a kid. A really little kid. And when he sees Grampa dragging the ‘shishtank’ out of the ‘titchin’ (which doesn’t even look like the real titchin anymore) his little world crumbles.

As much as change makes me uneasy, and scares me most of the time, I think I like it. I’ve made a lot of changes in my life recently, and my life has improved quite a bit because of those changes. Now, I’m realizing that the only thing scarier than change is staying stagnant. I’m a young adult- a student. Things are supposed to change... otherwise I’d be a broke twenty-something living in my parents’ basement making late-night blog posts and eating leftover Easter candy forever....