Living in Fiber Hell

Last year, one of my more brighter ideas was to cleanse my body of all toxins. I, after all was said done, quite successful in my, let’s say, cleaning house endeavours. My body, by all accounts, was feeling quite chipper. In fact, I would even go so far as to say elated with joy. Inflammation had dramatically dropped, poundage on my body melted off, my energy level soared, I could run up and down the stairs with narry an ache, and above all, my happiness quotient over the situation peaked me into an orgasmic state.

However, the downside was that I nearly gave myself an aneurysm half a dozen times whilst I struggled with the delicate topic of expelling my lady like bowels. Yes, I was painfully constipated and constantly concerned, as I said in a previous post, that my better half would find me on the floor of our bathroom with half a poop sticking out.

Somewhere during this process, I had made a dramatic discovery between the correlation of the pain in my body and the food that laid within the confines of my colon. When my colon was so clean that it was whistling dixie, my pain was virtually non existent. However, should my engine get a bit of a back up or plugged with sludge, well, let’s put it this way, the little engine that could, would start to suffer some serious internal combustion problems!

I knew that wheat had become my enemy, or better yet the little protein gluten contained within the wheat was a major contributing factor, and still is, to the pain that I suffered. I was at a quandary, or impasse to say the least. Without gluten, I felt wonderful, but plugged up. Without eating gluten, I was seeing stars on my toilet.

In order to save myself any further harm or brain damage, I spent the greater part of December and a bit of this month, traversing the aisles at the different local grocery stores on my quest to fill my fibre need sans gluten.

Surprising, it really has not been such a difficult transition from gluten to rice flour or almond flour. I have enjoyed my excursion to the sprouted wheat bread section of the local grocery store and have thoroughly enjoyed it instead of the genetically modified ground version. I have found the most gawd awful rice crackers and the best raspberry cookies ever, I have eaten bread that tastes like cardboard, and then ahhhed and ooohed over amazing pizza crust and tortillas shells, all in the name of living a gluten free lifestyle. What I can tell you is that living without gluten has forced me to try and enjoy the offerings of other grains, ancient grains, grains I have never heard of, grains that are impacting my life.

What I have also learned is that those grains work like a hot damn. No longer singing the constipated blues in the toilette, there are days that those bloody grains work a little too well. Now the food in my body is squealing in high delight as it exits my nether region like water on a slide.

In any event, I am definitely prepared to do what it takes to make my body happier, and well, let's face it, anything is better than living in fiber hell.

Until Next Time.

Tracy

Ink to Paper: An Uncommited Story

As long as I can remember, I have always carried some sort of calendar with me, pocket sized, day planner sized or hang on your wall size. And within the pages and small daily squares, contained the abridged version of my life at a twelve month glance.

In my twenties, I prided myself on recording pretty much my every moment, much like facebook, with the exception that it was only for my eyes, my review and a reminder of my memories. Come the end of the year, I would flip thru those pages and re-read the highlights, often smiling and giggling and saying things out loud to myself like “oh yea, I forgot I did that” or “wow, that was such a blast, gotta do that again” or quite often “gawd what was I thinking, so embarrassing!” Whatever the moment was, it was recorded there on the pages of my free Hallmark Calendar in bright bold blue ink. Yes, there were many big gashes and slashes thru things that I actually didn’t get to do, but the fact remained that I did so many wonderfully, soul and heart enriching things and that I committed to those moments using ink to permanently mark my time in history. And sometimes if the moment was so amazing, it would be highlighted in a rainbow of colours followed by several exclamation marks. They were the joyful, memory making moments of my youth.

Sometime during this time frame, my parents went thru a very nasty and devastating divorce, one which lasted for many years, one which would have made a Lifetime movie on some sorry network, one which should have put me into counselling for years and one that scarred me immensely. The details are not mine to share, as they are my parents story. I was only a side player with an emotional outcome that would have been a best selling novel, had I written for all to see. And it was during this emotional and stressful time that my once committed pen strokes started to disappear only to be replaced with a more subtle version of what would eventually become my uncommited pencil scribblings.

The word “yes” was no longer in my vocab as it was replaced with words like “perhaps”, “I’ll have to see”, “ummm... I think I have something already that night” and my very favourite and over used phrase “I am pretty tired and sore, maybe next time.” My pencil notations in my calendar were often marked with question marks, like “hang out with Charmaine?”, “go to Cathy and David’s for the weekend?”, “Melrose night with Deanna?” I could no longer commit and what is worse is that I didn’t really want too. I played everything by ear, used my parents divorce as an avoidance, missed dinners and parties, clubs and outing. I had in fact excused myself from life. I had in actuality stepped out of my life.

Year after year, my calendar entries became more sparse, less exciting, virtually uninteresting till finally the only thing that marked my calendars were birthdays, my semi monthly massages and waxing treatments and the numerous doctors appointments for the never ending chronic pain.

So sad and pathetic my calendar had become that I no longer reviewed my previous year, I just quietly tucked it away into my filing system never to be seen again by the light of day. That was until this past year when I sat quietly down and flipped the pages over and over and over again. I sighed long and hard as the flipped pages revealed a year devoid of anything interesting with one exception. I could only account for one meager highlight. One moment to remember when I knew I must have had more moments than that, that I should have had more moments than that, when I should have celebrated more, remembered more, smiled more, giggled more and shrugged more. But I didn’t. I had only one moment in that entire calendar year that I thought was worthy enough to jot down in ink.

I sat for sometime thinking that day. I reviewed moments I passed up, moments I sat with ice packs, moments I watched the same tv show week after week, moments going to bed early, unexciting, brain numbing, emotionless moments.

And I knew that it was enough, life was passing me by. I could no longer use the excuse that I would do all I wanted to do when my pain became more manageable, because the fact is the pain was not going to get any better, and my parents divorce was far behind me and I had risen past the emotional times and I had grown significantly stronger as person. And that mostly, I just needed to live.

So with pen in hand I wrote the following into my calendar:

Three weeks of art classes; and

18 Days in Italy.

Yes, they are there in bold blue ink surrounded with happy faces. What’s more is they are not just pipe dreams, they are dreams that have been bought and paid for and dreams that are about to be fulfilled, and I sense, that they are just two of the many highlights I foresee for myself in 2012.

And you know what? All it took was:

Ink to Paper.

Who knew?


Until Next Time.

Tracy

GOODBYE DIGNITY!!!

I have the Public Washroom woes.

Horrified by the site of a public piddling station since I was wee tall, I have done my best over the years to visit as few as possible.

Not in anyway designed for comfort, the effort to maintain any sense of dignity is all but non existent for me the moment I enter one of these torture contraptions.

To wit: last evening, my better half and I had taken my lovely sister in law and her hubby out for a pre-birthday dinner in her honour. Knowing my distaste for the public washroom, I usually refrain from drinking anything of an abundance in order to take the pressure off my bladder until I can safely use my own bathroom at home. However, with it being a cold night, the bistro we were at had upped their heating bill by cranking it to an almost uncomfortable temperature. Hot and parched, I removed clothing piece upon clothing piece to the point where I was one more clothing piece away from being charged with indecent exposure. With my throat parched and dry and my body as clothes free as humanly decent, my last resort was to suck back copious amounts of liquid to assist in my rather dry and soon to be hoarse voice.

It didn’t take long for my wee wee to be quite full of potential pee pee! In my stubbornness, I sat there fidgeting and wiggling and crossing my rather short stubby legs in order to avoid a potential catastrophe. Thirty agonizing minutes later, and trying to eat my salad in a calm collective manner, I started moving my butt around whilst I did my own version of a happy pee dance.

Mental telepathy and willing my faithful entourage who were blindly enjoying their meals to suck back their food quickly in order for me to get home to my faithful bathroom companion, was to no avail. The only process that was speeding up was the pressure that was pushing upon my rather weak bladder.

Finally, I gave up the fight and myself and my dignity trotted our way off to the despicable door that would ultimately lead to my relief.

It was only then as I entered into that dubious room, that I realized that they had squished in three very petite bathrooms stalls into what was obviously a two bathroom stall square footage.

Squeezing my big old butt around, I twisted and turned and cranked into position, steadied myself up onto my tip toes and precariously squatted several inches above the toilet in what could be described as an acrobatic pose. With my pants around my knees and slowly slipping towards my ankles, I did my business and reached for the rather large, space consuming toilet paper dispenser and yanked out nothing but a inch by inch square of single ply paper. Knowing that this would not be sufficient, I desperately grabbed and ripped and ripped and ripped one teeny piece after another teeny piece of toilet paper that would not have even wiped a mouse’s butt, let alone mine! Frustrated by the fact that the single sheeted toilet paper was not strong enough to pull around the enormous roll of toilet paper, I continued to rock back and fourth trying to maintain my acrobatic pose when, with one great big tug on the toilet paper, I found myself losing my balance and heading straight towards the bathroom stall door!

And with what could only be described as the most gawd awful sight known too man, I fell head first into the door stall, forcing the door stall right open, straight into the vanity, with my pants now around my ankles, my ass to the wind, still clutching nothing but a single sheet of single ply stinking toilet paper!!!

And there I stood, and there she stood, the older lady who just came threw the door.

And all I could say whilst she stared horrified at my exposed bottom half was: “Yup, goodbye Dignity!”

Until Next Time.

Tracy

A Splinter of a different kind...

I have always been on the fence in my life fighting a battle between happiness and unhappiness, positive and negative, joy and sorrow.

Cursed with equal parts of my mother's optimism and my father's pessimism, life has been a bit of a challenge for me in my efforts to remain more closely linked to the rose coloured glasses version of the world.  And it gets tiring I have to tell you.

Why is it that being negative seems so much easier than being positive?  Why can't you be optimistic every day with little to no effort?

I have found throughout the years that my father's pessimism wins far too frequently in my every day life. Of course, things like the world news, my local news, facebook links of abuse to animals, abuse to people, abuse to children seem to run rampant and fuel this part of my soul. 

I often wished I lived on an island surrounded only by the ones that I love, beautiful music and art, animals that wouldn't eat me, nature in general and all the colours of the rainbow.  Of course, somewhere in my perfect version of life, I would be the proverbial Dorothy living with the munchkins in munchkin land sucking on lollipops until my teeth fell out, without the wicked witch who would still be stuck flying around in Kansas giving some other poor soul a run for their money. In other words, I would be happiest with my head crammed up my ass.

But really, how dreadful is my life (*que violin music please)...  Well let's see, even though I work in a dead-end, uncreative job, I do make a fairly decent wage, have benefits and receive four weeks paid holidays every year.  And though this dead end job is not what I dreamed I would be doing, financially it allows me to have a pretty decent personal life. And even though my better half and my relationship was not the passionate love affairs that movies are made from (damn those stinking movies), it was a love affair that grew over time and now has established into an amazing relationship filled with kindness, thoughtfulness and consideration. And even though I live in a fairly unattractive city, it seems to sit in the middle of a beautiful landscape of rolling hills, mountains, trees as far as the eyes can see, with lakes and the pounding lyrical song of the ocean's crashing waves.

So what's my problem?

And why do I spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to find that elusive happiness?  

And why do I have moments throughout my life where I feel unfilled?

I think that somewhere in my brain, I have short circuited and told myself that life is always about being happy, with no turbulence, no strife, no effort. And, if I was truthful with myself, I would have to admit that it is a mindset that needs to be corrected. The question is how...

The question has always been how.

And whilst I sit on this proverbial fence trying to figure out what will make my heart tick in happiness, I can tell you that sitting here for too long not only leaves a fence railing imprint on your big old butt, but also overtime, your ass gets full of splinters. Yup, painful annoying splinters that keep reminding me that at some point, I must step down from that fence and get on with life because if I don't, that splinter will become permanent. And as the years go by, I fear it will fester into a splinter of a different kind. And I can tell you, that is one splinter I could do without.

Until Next Time.

Tracy

Lost in a cluttered soul...

As I was lounging like the lump of lard I can be on New Years day with my eyes bulging out of their sockets from the hours of mindless television I was punishing myself with, I over-exerted my toneless arm and reached for my plush new copy of a girly magazine. I told my less than desirable body that I was just pampering myself with a lazy day and taking advantage of the fact that the man and the pooch had left me alone for several hours to wallow in chocolate leftovers and slovenly behaviour.  What's worse, is that I sadly told myself I deserved it.  And as I flipped from page to page in what could be described as sheer boredom, I halted at an article that caught my eye when it started off by stating that a new year, so they say, was the time to start fresh with a clean slate and a new perspective.

I sat there for what felt like an eternity staring at that line and trying to comprehend what that meant for me.  What was I bringing into the new year? I still had the intense chronic pain from last year, I still preferred to enhance the chubby bum print on my couch, my hair was still fuzzy and unmanageable, I had a few more new nose hairs and chin hairs that I was more than happy to leave behind in 2011 and I was sporting a rather large pimple on my chin that I swear was not only talking back at me but was giving me attitude to boot.

My drawers were still full of panties with saggy asses or gawd forbid holes in them.  My socks and pants were faded due to the multiple times they had been washed, and my bras were no longer holding the girls in place.  In fact my poor bras, once brave and strong, that had forced my girls into permanent saluting submission, had now weakened so much that my girls were now happily hanging their heads cross-eyed whilst they surveyed the distance between themselves and my knee caps.

I stood up determined to find the positive in what was increasingly becoming a negative situation.  I opened this door and that door, this drawer and that drawer, and all that stared back at me were piles, piles of old clothes, receipts, shoes, mismatched dishes, old spices, canned food from gawd knows when, stale crackers and expired salad dressings.  My heart started to beat wildly in my chest as I saw half made crafts, and half written journals, half assed photographs in half assed matting, pickles jars with only brine, ketchup bottles with no ketchup, what was I doing to myself?

Was I unable to let go of my past years, was I holding onto something I feared I would loose, something so intangible that I had to hang onto the tangible?  Was I lost, lost deep within my cluttered soul?

My breath became shallower, my chest tighter, sweat was pouring from my temples, my hands were clammy and I swear I was ready to pass out by the enormity of the situation!

It was then, as I spent the next two hours trying to calm myself down and figure out what was haunting me, that I realized that while my soul was cluttered, it was actually cluttered with good things, with soon to be done art projects, and almost completed written posts, articles that were almost perfect and ready to be submitted to the newspaper, photographs that only needed to be developed, and projects that I could not wait to start.  Oh yes, my soul was actually happily cluttered.

Sadly, what I really was, was just a lazy slob.

Until Next Time.

Tracy

SO EXCITING.....!!!!

Yesterday, I got up all stuffy in my nose and an achy stomach (most likely from all the cabbage I put in my homemade chicken chowmein the night before) and thought to myself "Oh great!!! Here's how I am entering into a new year with a runny nose and a runny butt!  Yikes!"

And then I opened my email and......

I was nominated in three categories for Best Written, Humour and Life for the 2011 Canadian Weblog Awards!

And I was doing a happy dance all over the place, well specifically I did a happy dance straight to the bathroom, apparently cabbage could not hold back it's excitement either!

In any event, there are a gazillion amazing blogs that have been nominated, so quite frankly I am betting the buck stops here especially with the fantastic competition out there.  But in the meantime, I have to say that I do not know who or whom nominated me and I wanted you to know how utterly humbled I am that you would take the time to actually think of me!  Thank you very much.  How you touched my heart.

And thank you for making me smile whilst I spent the entire day yesterday leaking from all my orifices!

Your kindness has overwhelmed me!!! 

Until Next Time.

Tracy

Letting go....

2011 left me like the softness of a lover's caress and 2012 entered just as sweetly and gently, making me wonder what this year will hold.

My Christmas was a typical happy disaster created by the likes of me and my channelling of Lucille Ball.  From almost food poisoning my family with raw poultry, to loosing my turkey skewers and having to truss up the turkey with galvanized nails, to my family finding out about the galvanized nails, to sending them into the garage to eat their dinner where I transformed it into a sorry-ful makeshift dining room, to unthawing my Christmas dessert and having it collapse into mush and offering my family the alternative of whip cream shots from the can, to finally capping it off with laughter so hard that I nearly peed my pants, not once but twice, all over the fact that I was definitely the hostess without the mostess!

I spent the rest of this week either utterly exhausted laying on the couch moping to myself or had crazy like moments of being a furious tasmanian devil whilst I ripped down all the decorations before entering into the New Year. I blame the latter on the fact that I consumed copious amounts of chocolate dipped goodies.  

In all seriousness tho, I have always had this weird sense of wanting to leave the past behind when the New Year begins and open into the future for all that is new, fresh and mistake free.  Of course, eating a bag of chocolate covered almonds and six slices of bacon was not the best way to start the new year, although my stomach begs to differ!

However, for me, I have realized that it is time to let go of those things that are holding me back.

It's time for me to say goodbye to my insecurities, my sadness, my lack of confidence and my failures.

It's time to properly say goodbye to those relationships that are no longer in my life, but to which I hold onto in my heart, though strongly I know that they are gone.

It's time to let go of the past so that I can be open to the here and now.

It's time to close doors and open windows and feel the fresh air upon my face.

It's definitely time to smile and banish my self imposed frown.

It's time to sparkle in my eyes rather than squint (although I have a sneaky suspicious that sunglasses might help this infliction!) 

But mostly, it's time to let go of my fears.

This year, will be the year about growing...  And as I say that, I wish to clarify with the fates above, that I would like to grow metaphorically as a human and not my ever expanding waist line! However, I am open to growing in my height.  Just putting that out there in case you can do something about that! 

This year will be the year to believe in myself and realize that I am worth more than I have ever thought.

This year will be the year to reclaim my creativity and enthusiasm.

This year will be the year I fight thru and conquer those chains that hold me back.

And this year, really this entire year, will finally be the year I let go....

And I will... How do I know that, you say?  Well, I have already started...

Until Next Time.

Tracy