Gluten: a tenacious elastic protein substance, esp. of wheat flour that gives cohesiveness to dough.   Sounds pretty harmless, doesn’t it? But is it? After going through several weeks’ entries in my food diary, I’ve begun to focus on one clear culprit: Gluten. I’d been warned that it might cause problems, but for the first…

Sometimes, you just have to wonder: What’s the point? Why am I going through all this stuff? I’ve been spending a lot of time wondering just exactly that this last week, these last two weeks actually, and mostly because things have been so unrelentingly bad. I’ve been having a lot of trouble walking, to the…

OK, it’s official: Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, so there is to be an early spring in 2011. I love the sound of that, but I have to say I’m skeptical. After the winter we’ve had so far I’m thinking that winter doesn’t appear quite ready to give up yet. We’ve carried a…

Can little things change the world? They say that if the ‘little’ Dutch boy hadn’t plugged the ‘little’ hole in the dyke, the whole country might have been lost to the not so little sea. Or how about, “But for the shoe, the horse was lost, but for the horse, the soldier was lost, and…

This week I took some time off from writing because circumstances seemed to decree it. We had a national holiday (Monday, January the 17th) when all three of us (Paul, Joely, and I) were off together, a snow day from school (Wednesday, the 19th) that Joely and I didn’t take off, and then another snow…

I should be used to this: Things are never going to go smoothly. (Now, repeat after me: Things are never going to go smoothly! Things are never going to go smoothly!) More ups and downs were inevitable, and I don’t just mean trips to the basement! Yes, I have continued exercising, but the results haven’t…

We have a Thursday evening Bible study with another family every two weeks that is always a wonderful addition to our Sunday morning church. On this particular Thursday (01/06/11), my day lined up in an interesting way. Last week I was really tired, and I have to say I was thrilled (and guilty for feeling…

Reminisce. My Webster’s says it means ‘to think, talk, or write about past events.’ And that’s what I’m doing here; I’m thinking, talking, or writing about events from the past year, and trying to put things into some kind of order. BAD or GOOD? GOOD or BAD? Sometimes it’s all one and the same, as…

At Christmastime every year I have a ritual I go through without fail: There are certain movies we as a family must watch together at least once during the holiday season. Some of those movies are fun (Holiday Inn) some are touching (White Christmas) and some are just plain feel good movies that take place…

After rereading the last posting so I don’t repeat myself, I can’t say that I have all that much to report except to say that things aren’t getting worse, but are improving instead. The pain in the upper right side is merely the pain of the two recent extraction sites, and both seem to be…