Not Particularly...

I'm not particularly inspired to write today. In fact, I'm not particularly inspired to do anything today.

Except sneeze. I've been sneezing for the past 18 hours, basically.

I've been drinking some decaf green chai tea from Trader Joe's this morning, and while it tastes good, I'm not sure my stomach is all that fond of it. I suddenly feel like puking.

I feel like I should write something worth reading, but I'm not sure what that is.

Ah, this is worth reading: my husband got up this morning and went to work. What a great thing! It made me happy. And, he started emptying one of our bookshelves this morning, to take his youth pastor books to his new office, which also makes me happy, because now the books won't be two rows deep on the shelf. Good times.

I just came across a very fun book, and I will share some of its contents herein:
Cheap Ways to Plan a Creative Date
1. Car-less Drive-In: Haul your TV & DVD player out to the backyard on a starry night with a blanket and some bug psray. The neighbors might think it strange, but you'll have a blast.
2. Skip Dinner: Eat dinner at home. Later, go out for Krispy Kreme or Dunkin' Donuts. Stop at the ice cream parlor. Just get a snack together, which is definitely chaeper than a whole meal. Instead of going out late, get up before work or class and go out for breakfast. Or meet each other at your favorite restaurant for lunch. Most restaurants have lunch and breakfast specials, and it's cheaper than goign out for dinner.
3. Shower in the Middle of the Night: Watch the news for the next big meteor shower. They usually peak at some odd hour of the night, like 3 A.M. So meet each other at the park, or in the backyard and watch the shooting stars. Even if there is not meteor shower, just stargazing late at night would be very romantic.

Cheap Ways to Say I Love You:
1. Kisses: Buy a bag of Hershey's Kisses, take out all the flags, and replace them with messages you have written yourself. If you want your sweetie to notice them on their own, try usign bright paper to get their attention.
2. Two Straws: Go to the local diner and order an extra large milkshake with two straws. It's chaper than two milkshakes, and it's a classic romance move. You might even get a smooch in between sips.

Cheap Ways to Live Below Your Means
1. Forget Lump-Sum Living: Do envelopes, do a money program, do whatever, just abandon a life lived by the lump-sum balance in your bankbook. Lump-sum living is too tempting and too vague, a sure sign of something tha tmight lead us away from a life lived under our means. Instead, introduce "Spending Sectors" into yoru life. From CDs to collectables, from groceries to Grande Mochaccinos, spending sectors m ake you a diva of divvying funds, and at the same time set limits on spending. Set Sector limits by allocating funds to each. Spending is fine, but sectors clear up the picture and keep you from capitalizing on the longing only lump-sum living can provide.

Excerpts from Cheap Ways To... By Jason Boyett, Margaret Feinberg, Josh Hatcher, and Katie Meier, 2003.

Reminds me of how I want to write a book.

Ahhh, the Crazy Life

Oh yes, life is crazy.

I'll give you the Reader's Digest version:

Husband has new job.

We will be moving to rural Minnesota in the next 2 months, I believe.

I'm keeping my job, at least until I have a baby or the government decides not to fund abstinence education programs anymore, whichever comes first.

I have found my ideal form of exercise: walking with friends. The conversation makes the 40-some minutes go by like about 5...

In-laws are coming for the weekend, but it's not going to be as bad as I thought...they're coming Saturday morning instead of Friday night. God really does answer prayer. I'm not even kidding.

Labor Day weekend...more inlaws.

I move up to 40 hours a week starting October 1st, so I have about 6 weeks of Free Fridays to enjoy.

We will soon be getting a dog. My vote: Mini dachsund. Husband's vote: Golden Retriever. We'll for sure get the Golden, but I still have to work on the husband for the mini doxie.

We will be BUYING A HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited that I want to call the realtor right now, however, we still don't know what Chris' salary will be, so we should probably wait on the realtor. I suppose that means we need to meet with the bank as well. Ugh.

I just heard a story that made me smile: a coworker's son or nephew or somebody just got married to the niece of Carold Widman, the owner of a locally-owned chocolate company and at the wedding reception was a PILE of chocolate at the end of the appetizer bar. and when I say PILE, it was described to me as a 28 inch by 28 inch tray, heaped about 14 inches tall with chocolate. The gods smileth upon us.

Okay, well, I've typed so much today that my fingers are no longer hitting the correct keys. I better sign off....

Anniversary: Thai Style

Yesterday was our 3rd wedding anniversary. We started our celebrations by going to look at my ovaries, via ultrasound, which was exciting because there was a large follicle developing.

Then we took a nap.

Then we went to the Thai Orchid Restaurant in Moorhead for dinner. That was delictible. We ordered cream cheese wontons as an appetizer. They were not your typical wonton, but were crunchy and amazing, and came with plum sauce for dipping. There was a flavor in the sauce which I couldn't place my finger on, but it offered the best bit of variety in the sweet sauce. I ordered Pad Thai with Seafood (mussles - which I couldn't figure out how to eat, and which looked like little aliens on the half-shell), scallops, shrimp, and squid. I love Pad Thai in any form. I also ordered a Thai Iced Tea - sweetened Jasmine tea with cream. It was simply amazing. Had a bit of a smokey flavor to it. The best part? My stomach didn't hurt afterward. I brought some home for today's lunch, as well. They also offered Thai Iced Coffee, but I figured since it was evening, I better stick to the tea.

We also rented the movie, "Stranger than Fiction," which I loved, because the humor in it was very much like my own - a bit absurd and rather dry. Love it. Will Ferrell is usually not one of my favorite actors, but he was quite good in this one.

Me thinks it time to reheat my Pad Thai.

Taken Aback

Do you ever have those moments, whether it's listening to a song, or smelling a particular aroma, or seeing a beautiful landscape, that take you back to a time in your life when everything seemed nearly perfect? Or maybe it wasn't perfect, but your memory of the time is perfect. I'm having one of those moments right now.

I am listening to my all-time favorite CD - Bebo Norman's "Big Blue Sky," one of his earlier albums. It became my favorite CD sometime in the early fall of 2001, when a friend introduced me to it while we were working at Northwestern Bookstore. I had just moved to the Cities and was enjoying nearly every moment of my life. At some point during that first year, my friend, Bradi, came to visit me and we went to Stillwater to go shopping on a BEAUTIFUL bright, crisp autumn day - you know the kind - they're native to that part of the country where the sun shines off the quickly changing leaves and it's warm enough for just a sweater, and not so cold you need a jacket over that sweater. The air is clean, and cool, and so inviting that you really feel as though its kisses are a faint taste of heaven. Bradi and I walked into the Dream Coat Cafe, only to hear this same CD playing from the speakers in the cafe (it had just been playing on the speakers of my favorite car). I sipped on a frozen raspberry mocha and marveled at the simplicity of how happy I could feel in such an every-day place. I remember walking around the cafe, dreaming of having my own someday, basking in the relaxed atmosphere, and reveling in it's deliciousness. At that moment, I realized how mesmerizing life can be, how beautiful, and yet how simple. It was perfection.

DISCOVERY

Well, I finally did it. I discovered the root of my ailments. Sugar.

My digestive tract has been giving me problems since the fall of 2001. At the time I thought it was stress of life and full time work and full time grad school. Two years later, in August of 2003, I was undergoing an endoscopy and was told officially that I have acid reflux. A year later, they tell me I also have gastroparesis, which means my stomach doesn't empty properly. Around the same time, they give me some breathalizer tests and find out that I have what's called "fructose malabsorption." Well, all they did was hand me a list of foods I "shouldn't" eat and said that if I did eat them, it "could" cause me some "discomfort."

DISCOMFORT?!?!

Does the feeling of knives slicing your midsection through sound like discomfort to you!?!? (I'll give them, discomfort...with a brick.)

Anyway, each day my stomach gets worse and worse and worse, and finally I went back to the doctor's website and reminded myself of the foods I'm not supposed to be eating, and as I looked at that list, I could remember the things I'd eaten recently that were on the list that cause me great "DISCOMFORT!!!"

Fruit
Fruit Juices
Sweetened milk
Honey (?!)
Maple Syrup (?!)
Corn Syrup
TABLE SUGAR!?!?!?!?
Confectioner's Sugar (powdered sugar)

It's amazing to think that many of the foods I've always enjoyed so much were actually making me miserable. What actually happens is that the small intestine cannot break down sugars into smaller molecular fregmants for digestion. The sugars progress down into the colon where bacteria break it down into short chair fatty acids and the gases carbon dioxide and hydrogen. You can imagine for yourself what happens after that.... (TMI?!!?!?) Going on, though, fructose malabsorption is not only associated with gastro-intestinal distress but also the inability to absorb all kinds of nutrients which can lead to serious diseases likke anaemia and osteoporosis. (www.foodintol.com/sugar.asp). Sheer craziness. Guess I won't be eating sugar anymore...

Anyway, all I can say is this:

For whatever it's worth, I'm going to be very skinny.