No rest for the wicked

After multiple nights of being unable to sleep, I tried an over-the-counter sleep aid. I have never used an over-the-counter sleep aid, with the exception of a few herbal remedies here and there. Alright...we're at the drug counter. Hmm. I'm having a lot of trouble sleeping. Better try an extra-strength dosage.

I go home, take the medication, watch TV, drowsiness sets in. Significant drowsiness. I-can't-function kind of drowsiness. Sleep now.

I wake up an hour an a half later. The back of my brain feels as though it wants to crawl out of my skull. Chad is downstairs, has not yet come up to bed, is fixing some urgent problem at work. I take an Advil. Should I take the two medications together? I don't know, don't really care. My head hurts.

Chad? I think I'm dying.

I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M DYING!

I'm this close to asking you to take me to the hospital.

I think I'm having a stroke.

Chad! CHAD! Massage my neck.

NO! Massage my head!

NOT THERE! I said massage my neck, dammit!

WILL YOU LISTEN TO ME!?! I ASKED YOU TO MASSAGE MY HEAD!

I'm having a stroke. My brain is bleeding and I will die.

Seriously.

...so the next morning, I looked up potential side-effects. Potential of developing excitability, agitation, nervousness, inability to sleep.

Remind me to never take this medication again.

...so it's been a while

Fall seems to have come and gone, we have about a thousand bags of leaves to dispose of before it snows. Community Living is coming this week to pick up a bunch of stuff we're donating. Our baseboards still aren't finished, our kitchen still isn't completely painted, we're still missing a basement door. Not missing, as in we don't know where the door is located...missing, as in it's in the garage, awaiting final coats of paint before being installed.

We're getting a new garage door next week as well. Soon enough, we will have a clean garage with a door that works consistently. We will have damn good-looking baseboards and an awesome red kitchen. I will learn how to not date myself by using words like 'cool' and 'awesome'.

Seeing how long it's taken us to get these things accomplished (the renovations, that is - not the dating of self), I'm somewhat relieved that we're getting the bathrooms done by external contractors - if we were to do the remodel ourselves, I fear that we would have grandchildren by the time things were finished.

Which, as an aside, things are never really finished. You just quit. You look at that project and say to yourself: It's as good as I can get it, and that's good enough.

On another note, I watched an episode of House for the first time last night. Where on earth have I been? Now I want to watch from the very beginning which is very much unlike me. I'm a compulsive channel surfer and prefer to watch Food TV or medical shows (Gunter von Hagens public autopsies are strangely fascinating). More lazy stuff for me to do in lieu of painting. Always a good thing.

One more reason...

One more reason why I like my family so gosh darned much...

Yesterday, Brooke went through the majority of our baking cookbooks to compile a list of recipes that would be allowed on a gluten-free diet.

We probably have five linear feet worth of shelf space solely for cookbooks, likely half of which are for baking. This was not a simple task.

Recipe by recipe, she looked through them all and found several dozen recipes that she could make for me - mainly cakes and cookies.

Cookies?

I can have cookies?

My life is now complete.

:)

Oh, how quickly we forget...

Came home, and saw that Brooke had made Snickerdoodle cookies for our new neighbours.

Me: Hey! Those look good. Can I have one?

Brooke nods.

Me: Delicious! Tastes kind of like a sugar cookie.

Brooke: Yeah - I was really surprised at how easy the recipe was to make. It just had sugar and butter and flour -

Me: Ack! Forgot that cookies had flour in them!

Chad: Spit it out! Spit it out!

Well, at least I got to have a little bit of the delicious cookie goodness.

Delicious. Cookie. Goodness.

Now drooling slightly.

Note to self...

If you're making a grain salad, and intend to use buckwheat (gluten-free), and instead reach for an unlabelled container you think is buckwheat, make darned sure that you know it's buckwheat and not, let's say...bulgur.

Which is decidedly not gluten-free.

Oh. My. God.

My head hurts.

I have no idea if the headache is related to eating a wheat product - but I realized that I actually haven't had a headache since going gluten-free, which is quite remarkable (a whole week without a headache!).

Advil. You are my friend.

Blame my faulty genetics...

No wonder I'm a hypochondriac. Only someone with my genetics could end up with so many disorders. The latest in the long line? Celiac disease.

Ah. That may explain why I haven't been feeling so great. Not the end of the world, but I do love bread. Let me rephrase. I love bread. If I weren't already married, I'd have asked Bread to marry me a long time ago. Bread and I would have been very happy together.

So what do I do on the day of my diagnosis?

I figure, what the heck. If I'm going to avoid gluten, I might as well have one last night of hedonistic pleasure. I had brownies (made by my sister earlier in the day), pasta (fresh, from the Bulk Cheese Warehouse) with homemade carbonara, bread (Farmer's Market) and a donut with maple glaze.

Oh - and half of a family-sized bag of chips. Chips, I might add, are gluten free. To which, it was said to me that gluten-free didn't necessarily give me carte blanche to eat whatever I wanted.

What? No chips with a creme brulee chaser each night?

Come on. How bad would that really be for you? :)

Who needs knees, anyway?

I began my third week of training this week. Three and a half minutes of walking, one and a half minutes of running (okay, I jogged), repeated ten times. Plus stretching and warming up and cooling down.

Extra stretching, courtesy of exercises recommended by my physiotherapist. Lots of extra stretching.

I walked, I ran, I sweated.

It was fun.

That night, I woke up. Got out of bed.

Tried to get out of bed.

Realized that my knees had stopped working. Something on the lower/inner part of each knee was wickedly swollen, wickedly tender.

Apparently the old nun was right, maybe I'm not cut out for sports.

Good thing I'm stubborn. I shall try again. When I can walk, that is. :)