Sick

I have had a cold now for two weeks. It gets better then worse then better then worse. It's never quite as bad as those first few days but ugh, does it suck. Today, I'm feeling especially gross but I think it's because it's been going on for soooo long and I just want it to be done. Now. I'm sure I'll be in bed and fast asleep by 10 tonight.

You know how when you're not very sick, you just keep on going and so it takes longer to get rid of? That's definitely what's going on here. Today, I had to go to a meeting and I ended up being dragged to The Bay with my mom (a post for tomorrow perhaps!). But otherwise I have been napping/relaxing so I'm hoping this pays off. Cross your fingers for me.

Hopefully, when I feel better tomorrow (positive thoughts!), I will write tomorrow about my "lovely" experience at The Bay downtown. Unimpressed barely describes the experience.

I recently went to Toronto on a work trip. I actually had the opportunity to be a bit of a tourist rather than be stuck in a hotel working the whole time so that part was really nice. What wasn't nice was trying to find places to eat around my hotel. OMG that was brutal. I ended up having one dinner at The Keg which was nice since a lot of their stuff is very gluten free friendly and they even have a separate menu which was a nice touch but of course, that's a bit more expensive. However, much more reasonable than the lunch I had at my hotel. OMG. BRUTAL. Which is what lead to me wanting to find a different place for lunch the next day.

I hopped on Google to try to figure out what was near by and noticed there was a Boston Pizza not far away. They have GF pizza's that are just sooooooooo good. Except, while it looked not far away it was a good 15 minute walk from my hotel in plus 35 (celsius) heat. Awesome. And when I got there they were full and the wait was 20 minutes and I was dying of the heat. I ended up deciding to go elsewhere which was pretty much my 2nd mistake (my first was not opting to go to The Keg again for lunch, lol). I ended up going to a couple other places and reading their menu outside to decide if I wanted to go inside. Except, I didn't. I ended up at Tony Roma's and when I asked the manager there about GF options he was USELESS. I'm sorry but if the manager is useless, then it's really just a pointless restaurant excursion because OMG if they don't get it, their staff won't either. I ended up having fries. yay!!!!!! Anyway, I later found out that all their rib sauces are GF so I could have had ribs but since the manager was useless, I didn't know that. Woohoo.

Anyway, I figured Toronto would be super eassy to find GF food because hello, huge city! That means more people with a special diet like this. But nope, I had bigger obstacles than in Winnipeg. Although, I'm pretty sure the only reason I don't have huge obstacles here is that I'm familiar with the lay of the land as it were and so I know where to go. And I have a car so I can go wherever I please rather than being at the mercy of where I can walk/taxi/bus without getting lost. Oh well!!! I was there for a conference of sorts and I must say, they were awesome at ensuring GF meals HOWEVER, my only complaint is that I had to find a server and ask them for my food (it was a buffet for most people). I felt like this created an obstacle as well as singled me out. I work in the disabilities community and I really strongly believe in eliminating barriers. I hate when people need to ask for a key to an elevator in order to ensure accessibility, that type of thing however, I felt like I was basically "asking for the key" in order to get my lunch. I really just wish they had had the buffet items labelled as to what they are with a little "GF" symbol next to them. If I couldn't get protein off the GF buffet, then fine, make me ask I guess but almost guaranteed there were items I could have had from the buffet but since they weren't marked, I wasn't going to risk it :(

Anyway, this has made me want to become more involved in advocacy work. I think the more restaurants know about gluten intolerances and the more they know how EASY it is to accommodate then the better. So yes, I am on a mission. Watch out.

In happier news, I discovered Kinni-Kritters this week. Yum!!! I've been a wee bit jealous of my nephew because he can have all the animal crackers he wants but yay now I can have them too!!! Other than bread and pasta, there aren't a ton of gluten type foods that I love. I like cookies but I don't love them so no big deal. I've really only ever like chocolate cake/brownies and I have a store that makes FAB GF brownines so that dilema is solved. And Glutino makes amazing crackers that I love. The Kinni-Kritters just completes the "missing" food from my life. YAY!!!

Back to School Time

I still totally think of this time of year as back to school time. Will I ever grow out of that?

I don't have kids so it's weird that I think that way. Although, my fabulous farmer DOES have a kid so that COULD explain why this year I am thinking of it as being back to school time (FF is the primary caregiver). Hmmmmmmmmm.

Regardless. It is now September 7th and I feel weird that I haven't bought a back to school outfit for myself....It's been 3 years since I finished Uni and gosh, 8 years since I finished high school. WTF?

I bought a new computer today.

Maybe I should back up.

I am a computer killer. For real. I know computers, I understand computers but somehow they die on me.

Three years ago this month I bought my last computer. It was after the fan died on my laptop, we didn't know and decided to run a disc defrag. Guess what? It overheated and DIED. Melted the motherboard. YaY! So right before I moved to Vancouver I had to buy a new laptop. Not exactly where I wanted to put the last of my money, but okay. I did need it in order to find a job when I got there.

So that one was the fan. K.

The replacement was a lemon. Something didn't work properly so I went to exchange it. That didn't go well since they didn't have a replacement and somehow things were rung in screwy but after a 2 hour "discussion" at the store we finally got it sorted.

WELL. The new laptop was even more of a lemon. Over the first two years of having it I had to reinstall the operating system probably four times. Fine. I also had to have the hard drive replaced twice. This was under an extended warranty. Whatever. Well, that warranty ended a year ago so I actually took it in a couple days before the warranty ended just to make sure it was "fine". It was. Darn, no replacement for me.

Just short of a year after the extended warranty ended it died. The fan broke and it was overheating like CRAZY. After 15 to 20 minutes of use it would slow to a snails pace and threaten to die. Ugh. That is absolutely no kid. And when you consider that it was at its max for memory (at 2 gigs) and the fan didn't work, the little plastic hooks that hold it shut had long ago broken off, it had about 20-30 minutes of battery life and half the usb ports didn't work. There was no point in trying to fix it. After three years I don't think it owed me anything.

I should mention that this was one of two laptops I was using. The other one crapped out three days earlier. After having run a diagnostic test we determined that there was no fixing it.

Both of these laptops crapped out on me around the same time about 26 months ago. This was when one was brand new (work related) and the other was about 10 months into its warranty. They died within days of each other.

Makes sense that they died within days of each other again. This time it just wasn't worth it to fix them (it was free before).

Now I have a pretty new laptop that runs oh so fast and doesn't have vista. Sweet. AND I can listen to music while surfing the internet without having it plugged in and it still lasts quite awhile. None of this 20 mintues crap. Currently I'm listening to Dashboard Confessional. I don't think I've listened to "them" in about 4 years but I'm loving it. Shhhh, tell no one.

This all sums up with the conclusion that I am terrible to laptops. I bought the stupid three year warranty and I guarantee you that I WILL be getting a replacement laptop. Guaranteed this thing dies three times before that 3 years is out. IF I had bought the three year warranty three years ago, I'd be using a free replacement laptop right now (it died about 7 days before the three year mark, amazingly.

Being gluten-free

About 6 weeks ago I cut out gluten. It's been at times quite trying but definitely a really great decision.

The story -- stop reading now if you're squeemish --

You see, I've spent nearly 8 years in pain. Nearly 8 years of wondering why I was so sick all the time. Not sick in the contagious sense, I have a great immune system. Sick in the bloated, frequent BM, tired but can't sleep properly come night time, gas, migraines, iron deficiency, "IBS" (what a b*ll sh*t thing by the way), etc. The biggest, most annoying thing was the whole needing to run to the bathroom about 30 minutes after EVERY MEAL! Okay, maybe not every meal, just about 95% of them. It was horrible. So I was trying to just eat healthy and properly and not have food with preservatives as much as possible. I mean, during this time we also discovered I couldn't wear contacts anymore and they figured it was likely from the preservatives that are involved so it would totally make sense that it would be preservatives hurting my tummy. Except, this didn't completely solve things and my doctor just said "oh you have IBS" and "oh well some people just have that many BMs in a day". Seriously? 3 times a day? 3?? And in that um...shall we say consistency? Oh, and let's not forget that during this time I've suffered through on and off again bouts of fissures. YAY!!!!!!!!

I've also known about Celiac Disease during most of this time however refused to believe that that's what was going on. What I didn't realize is that you can have a gluten intolerance as opposed to a gluten allergy (which is what Celiac Disease is).

Over the last 8 years more and more people have figured out that they have this problem and over the last 8 years more and more food has become available in more tradional grocery stores. Now, you can actually go to your local grocery store and find special gluten free foods rather than driving half way across town to a little tiny store that charges an arm and a leg for these things. Now, I do totally support the little guy but um dang this stuff can be EXPENSIVE!!

So about 7 weeks ago I said to my doctor "can we do the blood test for gluten sensitivity". "sure" he said. So a week later I did the test. And right after that I stopped eating gluten. Guess what? I felt so much better. I didn't even realize how bloated I always felt. Apparently, I was just always bloated but sometimes I was EXTRA bloated. Oi! How terrible! Well, the test has since come back negative but, here's the thing. Those tests aren't terribly accurate AND I really wasn't eating tons and tons of gluten before the test (which I have since learned is QUITE important).

There have been two occassions where I knowlingly ate something with gluten in it. 4 weeks ago I ate a hot dog with a regular bun. I spent the next 24 hours with gas cramps. And this last week I ate something that had just a weeeee bit of breading and yup, gas cramps for 18 hours. But, was it worth it? Hell yah! I loved every bite. But something tells me I should be confirming that it's a gluten intolerance and not Celiac Disease (I should point out that I generally don't crave things that have gluten in them because I KNOW it could make me feel VERY crappy and it is sooooo nice to not feel crappy).

Now that things will be calming down a bit at work I'll be going to visit my doctor again to talk about these developments and see what our next steps are. I may have to find a proper doctor (as in, not the doctor I've seen since I was 5) and start down this path with a new doctor. But, it should be an interesting journey.

I've been reading a lot of blog postings lately that are reminiscing about when those writers started blogging...back in the day. You know, when it was an online journal. I myself started out at diaryland back in December of 2003. Gosh, that was so long ago. In December of 2003 I was 19 and in my 2nd year of university. I'm 26 now and so much has changed. Unfortunately, the last couple years I've spent allllll my time reading about other people's lives (because they are so fascinating!!!) and not much time at all chronicling my own life. The funny thing though is that each day I compose an entry in my head while driving to work. For real. And then I never put pen to paper or in this case, fingers to keyboard. I am once again vowing to do more of this. Writing every few months or more is just not working for me. I love to write. It gives me an opportunity to reflect on the events of the day and I love that. I suppose that's why I still compose entries in my head all the time. Hmmmm.

Today is a busy day for me. I haven't decided (still!!) how much to share regarding certain key indicators that would identify me. I adore and applaud those who do but am not sure if I can do it yet myself so I suppose I won't be sharing what it is that is so busy about today but rest assured, today is a very important day for me professionaly.

And I just want to say, in case sometimes I forget, that my boyfriend is mighty sweet sometimes. He isn't big on mushy, sentimental things, but this morning he texted to wish me a fun day and wake me up. Awwwwww. lol. But really, I know when he does stuff like that that he actually, truly means it because he isn't about saying things for the sake of saying things. Does that make sense?

Anyway, in closing I hope to be here a lot more often and I hope to be writing a little about what's been going on the last few years to fill in some gaps. I want to be able to remember some of these things when I'm older so I better get cracking!!!

A Passing

This Saturday marks the one year passing of a friend and coworker's death. He committed suicide. I'm not really sure how he did it, I'm not even sure if it matters. I know that sometimes I wonder because I guess I wonder if it will somehow help me to understand why he did it.

He was recently married. Seriously. He had been married what, 12 days?? 12 days. They had gone on a holiday for a week and then returned to work on the Monday. By Thursday he was in our boss' office telling him he was stressed out, he couldn't handle what was going on. Which, was understandable. We were all stressed. I mean, we were preparing to host thousands of athletes from around the work in less than two months. We had way too small a budget, not enough staff, and were trying to make miracles happen. But where some people thrive on this sort of stress, others falter. I guess he faltered.

Our boss assured him we would assign help to him. He wasn't sure how it would be done but that he would make sure it happened. Of course, this wasn't about the job. We gather it was about his entire life because generally these things are not only about one stressful piece in the puzzle of life but rather a perfect storm of multiple things. Perhaps this was the straw that broke the camels back, but perhaps there were thigns we didn't really know about. To be honest, we were "just his coworkers" so it's not like we ended up getting answers to questions we so desperately needed answers to. It was and still is awful.

I use quotations around "just his coworkers" because as any one working an event knows, working as part of such a close knit team on something so huge means really becoming a family. So while maybe his flesh and blood family didn't understand how close we all were, we definitely were close. I spent a lot of my time speaking with this friend, getting to know him and understand him. Sure, he drove me absolutely bonkers at times but he was still a part of my work family and I understand where he came from.

Anyway, our boss sent him home to try to relax. Told him we'd work it out. Less than 24 hours later he went missing never to be seen alive again.

Searches were organized, tearful pleas were made. In early July a body was found in an area where we thought he may have gone. We weren't told about this at the time. It was the Sunday before our massive event started that we found out for sure that he had killed himself. I received an email from a family member. I was sitting at a stoplight at an intersection when it came through. It was a long light so I started reading it realizing that the sender was a family member of his. I was very fortunate in that I was less than five minutes away from the office (yes it was Sunday but realize we were a week away from things really getting going). (To clarify, the event was to start in just under two weeks but realize that an event unofficially starts a week earlier.)

I managed to get myself to the office with tears streaming down my cheeks. There were only a couple people in the office when I got there which was a relief. And those people had already heard. I went to my desk and cried. I was grateful to know the outcome but just couldn't believe that this was happening. That someone so full of life was gone. That he couldn't handle whatever struggles he was facing even though he fully seemed on the outside to be someone who could handle anything and everything life threw at him. He was newly married for goodness sake!

It's been nearly a year and I still haven't fully come to terms with it. 90% of the time I'm fine. But when I think about it I just can't understand. I've grieved the death of a loved one before but always a death where it was easy to reconcile in your head. Older relatives, individuals with a degenerative illness that was terminal etc. Never someone so young and so....well, not sick. Not sick in a way that can be diagnosed with concrete tests. No, depression and all mental illnesses are much different than that. And it's hard to really reconcile that. I feel anger, sadness, disbelief, confused, and a whole myriad of other feelings. The grief process, as I have found, is completely different when someone commits suicide. When someone chooses to end their own life. And my feelings are felt all at once, just to add to the confusion. And I don't think it needs to be explained but none of these emotions is straight forward on its own either. The anger is anger towards him, towards myself, towards a system and society that fails men more often than woman (boys don't cry afterall....), anger towards him for doing this to his family, his work family, his brand new wife. Sadness that he didn't think we could help, sadness that his wife lost her husband so soon, sadness that his parents had to bury their son, disbelief that he isn't here, that I know someone who was hurting this bad, that he left us all, confused that this has all happened, that he couldn't find his way out. I could go on and on.

We found out after his death was confirmed that he had left a note. I still don't know what the note said, I know nothing. I wonder if that would even make a difference. Probably not. I would probably be just as confused as ever.

What I do know is that this weekend I will be mourning the loss of such a great individual. I will be praying in my own way that this won't happen every again and that we can find a better way to reach out to individuals who are feeling this way and help them find their way out of it. And I will be praying that I NEVER know another person who feels so lost, so confused, that they don't feel they can reach out to me or anyone else for help.

This weekend, I will be taking time to reflect on all that has happened and try to find a way to make a difference.