Like taking Candy from a Woody

Halloween is NOT my favourite holiday. Please don't hate me and egg my house. Even when I was a kid, I wasn't a fan of the costume. I remember stomping around the house rolling my eyes as my siblings suggested costume after costume. If there wasn't a pillow case of chocolate at the end of the road, I wouldn't have bothered at all. Now as a grown up, I do enjoy dressing the spawn up.

I like finding the 'just right' thing to make their costumes extra special. although, I may have passed on my lackadaisical attitude to my kids. When my son was 3 he refused to wear a costume. When we gave option after option of dress up ideas he would respond with, "Ethan will be Ethan on Halloween like every other day." Trev and I had to shrug and agree that this was true.

 In the end though, he agreed to dress up as Woody but (like me) it was only to get the candy. Still at every house, when the neighbour would say 'Oh look! It's Woody!' he would take off the cowboy hat and exclaim, 'No, it's me Ethan.'

The boy would play our game, but on his own terms.

Now, they both love dressing up and I make all the magic happen. I am even making little glutened cookies for them to bring to school that look like witches. I love Halloween for the kids, but there is something extra creepy about seeing grownups wandering around dressed as Tinkerbell or a dog.

Again though, there is a sack of candy at the end of this road and I don't even have to ask for it. Like all parents, I will shuffle through my spawns' pillow cases looking for razor blades and heroin needles. Instead though, I shall steal as much as possible from them as I can. I consider their candy donations to me payment for services rendered for a great Halloween.That's the way I roll.

Just because we have Celiacs doesn't mean that we can't steal as much candy as we want.

CLICK HERE to see a list of Gluten Free Candy!


Happy Halloween, now, go steal your kids hard earned booty to teach them you are bigger, stronger and have more money.

Stay Calm and Fart On

I know that you might not want to talk about this but the time has come in our relationship that we have to start to cover something important. The compelling, hard hitting issues need to be dealt with.

We have to talk about gas. Not Oil and Gas, not the Keystone Pipeline…nope farting.

Someone has to be the hero here. And that guy is gonna be me.

Why do we HAVE to talk about gas?

Why? Why? Because we all do it that’s why. Because it was one of the first things you ever did on this planet. You were caught by the doctor, took a deep breath, saw your Mom’s face and farted. And because when you where seven, you thought it was AWESOME. My philosophy is to regularly do things that you thought were awesome when you were seven.

Now, I don’t speak for all Celiacs but I have always been known as a Gassy Girl. If you know me for more than 37 seconds, I have most likely passed gas in front of you.  The Internet says that the average human farts about fourteen times a day. For me, you better double that. Whether I admit this or not has nothing to do with you. Most of the time, I don’t admit being the culprit of a stink bomb and neither do you so don’t get all righteous about it.

When I was a flight attendant, I called it “crop dusting”. I would walk from one end of the plane to the other, relieving my internal pressure the whole way, then, when I got the  front, I would turn around and watch every row look around in disgust at the poor saps behind them. It was like my own form of the wave… awesome.

I can only assume that my noisiness has to do with my Celiacs. That’s what I blame it on anyway. I used to blame it on my spawn but my husband decided to teach them to speak (which was a practice I thought was completely over rated) and now they don’t let me blame it on them. I have been standing in a store and Ethan has stopped, looked at me, taken a step away and said in a very loud voice, “don’t even THINK of blaming that  giant fart on me.” Then he starts to laugh, because farts are funny.

 

I can tell you that when I have been Glutened, the resulting flatulence is absolutely not fun at all. But for the rest of the time? I think it’s awesome. Seriously seriously fun times.

Case in point. We were camping with good friends of ours and I was cooking in our trailer. Our friend Scott came in to get something. He opens the fridge, stops and stares at me.

 

And while suppressing a gag he says,

            “You were just going to go ahead and pretend that never happened were you?” he says calmly. “No ‘excuse me’, no ‘ah gee Scott, don’t come into my trailer because it smells like shit’. Hey Laurie? That would be nice of you.”

 

            “I HAVE A DISEASE!” I screamed desperately, “I CAN’T HELP IT!”

 Scott began to laugh and went back out to give Trev massive amounts of pity. 

Recently, Trev and I have been doing a Cleanse. I used to think that Cleanses were for hippys and people who ate their own placenta but I have come to accept The Cleanse as a useful tool. After I get glutened, I tend to do a Cleanse, to clean the pipes so to speak. Now, I don’t do the Cleanses where you starve and drink only goat urine until you shit through the eye of a needle. Nope, not me. I do the ones that call for “cleaner eating” which is pretty much how I eat anyway so it’s just a couple more vitamins a day. No problem.

The problem is that somehow, Cleanses increase my gaseous nature and by “increase”, I mean, “I fart when I breathe”. Good fucking times. Have you seen those videos where those guys dress up like an old man and wander around Walmart with a fart machine grossing people out? Ya, that’s me, except I’m not dressed up.

The other day, Julia and I were in the toy section of Walmart when a Celiac poofty just snuck right out of my bum. It was loud. The lady beside me looked at me like I had just slaughtered a baby seal pup in her lap and stormed away shaking her head. Julia and I however, thought this was deeply entertaining and started laughing really hard, which made me fart more which made Julia laugh more and so on and so on until we just sat down in the middle of the aisle beside the Barbies until we could control ourselves and my sphincter. 

This is how I teach my daughter to act in public.

To her future husband, I say a hearty, ‘You are Welcome’.

 

There seems to be nothing that I can do about my Celiac gas. So I guess I am stuck with it. If you are a friend of mine, you are stuck with it too. Just try to stay up wind.

PS Gas-X is Gluten Free for those of you who don’t think this post was in any way enjoyable.

No Snobs Need Apply

I hate snobs. I genuinely do. And, looking back over my life, this has been a consistent theme throughout. I really never liked that Leanne girl in grade two who had her nails professionally done every week and got to keep them long. She would look at our overly trimmed fingers and roll her eyes and asked if we were poor. The other girls followed her around like a row of ducks - I instantly hated her guts. I never liked the guy at a party who sat and talked about how rich/important/well connected his father was. Other people would sit rapt with fascination, me? I go get me another drink because this guy is wearing on my patience. I equally cannot stand wine snobs. People who refuse to drink wine from a certain country or region or will refuse to drink anything that isn’t over a certain price point. Have you ever heard someone say something as asinine as ‘I don’t drink Australian wine.’ What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you know how big Australia is? Do you know how much wine it produces each year? Don’t leave your house if the world irritates your wine senses enough for you to be a douche to everyone you encounter.

I am sitting here and wondering what the difference is between a person who likes nice things and a snob. Because really, we all have indulgent things that we enjoy. Is everyone who owns an expensive handbag a snob? I don't think so. Is it the AMOUNT spent on a item or service that bumps it from a treat to a bragging right? I don’t think so.

I think that, like most things in life, snobs are created through INTENTION. We all have items or things that we splurge on, treat ourselves and our families. It’s about your intention behind it that determines if you are a snob or not. A snob goes places, buys things or attends events with the intention of impressing others. This is why snobs make a POINT to tell everyone they encounter about how exclusive their tastes are – because they are DESPERATE for people to pay attention to them.  You all know someone like this, don’t you? Maybe more than one person? You should probably limit your interaction with them because people like that can be bad for the soul. I feel bad for them...it must be exhausting to be that focused on how you are perceived.

And let’s not throw stones shall we? Have we not all been a snob about one thing or another? I certainly, have and it’s something I am trying to evolve about myself.  A lesson recently has been learnt. I USED to be a snob about Chili’s.

 

And don’t lie, you are too.

I can’t even remember the last time that I was at Chili’s. It appears as though neither of my children have ever been there so I am thinking it has been more than 8 years! I specifically remember people asking, ‘what about Chili’s?’ for dinner and I responded with, ‘I don’t eat there’ (please add in a shitty tone here too because that is how I said it). I admit it…go ahead and judge me….I deserve it. Since my Celiac diagnosis, Chili’s hasn’t even entered my mind. Where our family has been evolving into cleaner, organic and healthier gluten free foods,  I never even considered Chili’s as an option.

Last week, my friend Megan and I had to do some shopping and she suggested Chili’s for lunch. Instead of shooting it down, I called and talked to the manager who assured me that they had an extensive gluten free menu and were well trained in Gluten Free Awareness. So I dropped all my snobbishness and I can’t even tell you how happy I am that I did. We enjoyed lunch that day so much that I took the spawn there last night.

The servers were attentive and we had great service, both times. The moment I said I had Celiacs, there was the perfect reaction – a lean in, pen poised, head cocked and ready to listen. Last night, our server Alex even went back and talked to the chef to make sure all ingredients were Gluten Free. The corn tortillas are organic which I loved. Our food came out fast, fresh, and hot. The kids loved their meals and wolfed everything down. *as a side note I had not fed the kids in hours so they were super-duper hungry but they still would not have eaten it if it was gross. I like to starve the kids a bit, lets them know who’s boss. That was a joke…simmer down* They didn't charge me any extra for my GF food either. Which, if you read this blog, is a BIG deal for me. And if you don't read this blog religiously, you really should....it's marvellous.

I have to say that I was wrong about Chili’s. The GF menu is pretty great and the service is awesome and the food was wicked good. We will certainly be back and I recommend you drop some of your snobbish thoughts and go too.

Really, drop ALL snobbishness. Stop worrying about how you look. If you are particularly fond of a certain product or restaurant, wicked, enjoy it but don't be a snob about it. 

 

Stop caring what others think of you, trust me, you will be much happier for it.