Author Archives: Krissy Gibbs

About Krissy Gibbs

Just your average hippy white trash incest survivor stay at home mom. Is there an average for us? No? Oh well.

Day 36

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I don’t know how this is going.

Brekkie: hot rice cereal (that I made wrong the day before) fried into fritters with olive oil and maple syrup.This was surprisingly tasty. Noah added some gf flour mix.

Lunch: ramen

Dinner: risotto, sparkling apple juice

4:45am- lots of dark brown very soft diarrhea

9:15am- slightly shaped, light yellow/brown

6:15pm- bright yellow diarrhea

 

Today it is formed. Which means that the ramen didn’t completely fubar me. I don’t know what is up with my body. Does this mean milk is a no? AHHHH.

Woo doctor said I’m allergic to bananas but apples are fine. Which is the reverse of what I’ve been doing for over five weeks now. Shit.

Day 35

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Brekkie: hot rice cereal with sugar and milk. I also had black tea with sugar and milk. This is a “test cow milk day”.

Lunch: lamb, mashed potatoes (ghee only), one lonely carrot. More tea with milk!

Dinner: beef soup with homemade stock, bok choy, cabbage, and carrots.

Dessert: peanut butter cookies (made with just sugar and no flour)

 

3:30am: huge cloud of soft greenish poop

7am: more greenish soft cloud. Wow I feel empty.

Find gratitude.

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My life is not short on excitement. It is now pretty clear that this elimination diet journey is going to take many months. Deep sigh. At least I have the ability to do it. Be happy about that. Takes privilege.

Beyond food being hard over the next few weeks I will have Thanksgiving. I have no idea what I will eat (even my “yes” list is suspect given how much diarrhea I still have) but I will be with the three people in the world who are obsessed with me. It’ll be a good day.

Christmas should be fun. We are starting to gear up.

January will hopefully be very slow. Glacially slow. We’ll see. February we go to Disneyland for a week. March has FOGcon. April has My Little Pony Convention (Called BABScon). May is Shanna’s birthday. June is Noah’s birthday and then we run away.

Just over six months away. I’m starting to look for specific data on where to camp and store stuff while we site-see and such on the big trip. My data-filled-book grows. I’m excited. What to do in different places? Oh so many choices.

Whatever negative things I can say about my life… it is full of wonder and joy. I’m grateful to be doing the things I get to do.

I’m sure we will sneak in another weekend or two camping once I get the trailer put together. Yes, I need to test it in cold weather. I want to live in it for six months. There will be cold nights.

Today I go back to the woo-doctor again. A friend invited us to go ice skating this afternoon. Then we see Pam for the penultimate time before she runs off to see her family on another continent. She’ll be back but she’s going to be gone a while.

Next week no woo-doctor. I get to go be frustrated by Kaiser telling me they won’t help me (wait and watch) and on Wednesday I get a crown put on the tooth I cracked. Yay! Or something. So today with the woo-doctor and then two weeks till I can see him again. (Saying that mostly so I remember later when I talk to him.)

The lucky ones, Miss Piggy, and taking turns.

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I drove to therapy this morning alone. Alone time in the car is pretty fun these days. One of the songs was Taylor Swift’s The Lucky Ones and I spent a bunch of time thinking about it. In order to be one of “the lucky ones” you have to be compared to other people, who are less lucky by comparison. Noah spends a lot of time telling me that people aren’t happy or sad on an absolute scale they are happy or sad compared to the people near them.

I’m kind of a miserable son of a bitch. I spend a lot of time feeling shitty and miserable and like my life is shit. Which is demonstrably not true. I know a fair number of single people (of both genders or no particular gender at all) who haven’t found anyone in the world who validates them the way that Noah and my kids validate me.

I *am* one of the lucky ones. I have two children who are perfectly suited to my desires from children. They are plucky, ambitious, cheerful, talkative, and very affectionate. Pretty much what I would have designed if I had been able to sit down with paper and decide what kind of kids I would have.

And then there is Noah. I feel like a serious schmuck sometimes because of how unworthy I feel about Noah. Noah is a good partner. Like, whoa good. He is cheerful and encouraging and loving and so ridiculously sweet to me. I feel so much gratitude that there is someone on this planet who loves me so much. I don’t see many people with a similar level of unconditional love and support. I truly am one of the lucky ones.

It is hard changing my self perception. It was accurate that the first 25 years of my life weren’t great. I didn’t have the worst early life in history. I didn’t have anything near one of the best early lives. It was a life. It was hard. So when I think of my life being shitty, it is entirely past tense. My life isn’t shitty any more.

That leads me to this idea of finding hope. My life isn’t shitty any more and it probably will never reach the point of being that shitty again. I am going to have bad days. I am going to have bad experience. I may even experience more trauma (the world is like that) but forever and ever amen I am not in the position I was in. I am always going to be one of the lucky ones. That is weird.

I feel really weird because so much of it feels like a gift Noah bestowed on me. I’m his rescue project. Ew, ick, yuck. (For the record he doesn’t seem to appear to think of me this way. You can tell who thinks of you as being “lower” socially or in need of “rescue”. Noah doesn’t talk to me like that.)

Even when I’m being incredibly irrational, Noah treats it like one state of being. It is one way I act. It isn’t the only way I act. Sometimes I am even highly rational. He treats those times as being more important.

I was thinking recently how unfair it is that Noah has to be supportive of me so much of the time in comparison to how much support I give him. It occurred to me, while watching The Muppet Christmas Carol, that I am uhm, kind of Miss Piggy like with my affection for Noah. It has to be all ME ME ME ME ME ME until I notice that he has an issue and then I flatten him with my desire to be “supportive”. This was not a flattering self-understanding.

Noah has told me that I want him to be obsessed with me. I’m willing to bet that is true. I do. I want him to care and care and care and be interested and fascinated and I want him to not get bored with me even though I’m repetitive.

A long time ago we agreed that we would take turns having bad days. We each believe that it is our responsibility to carry 100% of the relationship. That way when someone falls down it doesn’t feel like they aren’t doing their share. I like to believe I provide a little of this experience for Noah. I know it is a fucking lie–I don’t support him like he supports me. I’m really sensitive to this whole “being a dependent” thing. But he doesn’t expect me to do much and I treat him doing things around the house like a gift.

The secret to happiness is low expectations. If Noah expects me to do just about nothing and instead I do more like 45% of the work–I don’t seem as bad! In comparison, on weeks when Noah does no cooking nor any cleaning… I can’t find it in my heart to be mad at him. He does so much work that I have to smile and say, “That’s ok. I’ll do it this time.”

I believe in setting people up for being successful. We have carefully created a life where we are each likely to seem successful to the person we are standing nearest–partially because we carefully set up what it means to be “successful”. We are both big on giving direction, “I would really love it if you _______”. I appreciate that he has worked really hard on being able to say things to me–even when it is hard and he knows I won’t like it. He prefaces with, “I’ve been trying hard to think of a good way to say this and I haven’t come up with one. I hope that I can say it in a bad way and you can hear what I really mean without getting upset about my bad phrasing.”

I love this man so much I feel like I will explode some days. He acts like me reacting to bad phrasing is a reasonable thing to have happen. He hopes I won’t get mad this time because he really means well. But if I do get mad, well it will make sense and that’s ok.

I don’t get a lot of that kind of accommodation in the world. Mostly people act like it isn’t ok to ever react badly to their words. If you do then you are the meanie. But! BUT! BUT!

Noah acts like I am a person with a long and convoluted history and he wants to be kind to me. That means handling my little points of prickliness without treating me like an imposition. I feel so loved in my house. I feel like I matter.

I have a lot of friends. My friends love me very much. I am very grateful for their presence in my life. Noah is in a whole different category. Noah validates me.

Noah tells me frankly that he lived before he met me and he would carry on without me if I died but he would be forever less. Noah makes me feel like if I died, the world would be less bright. There would be less reason to keep trying hard things.

I’ve got some feelings about this boy of mine. I feel very lucky. I hope I never take him for granted. I hope I always appreciate him this much. When I struggle to see what I’ve got going for me, and I feel like I should die…

I don’t want to miss out on one day of Noah’s company. I don’t believe in an afterlife. I think this life is all I’ve got. Take it and make with it what you will. I want more time with Noah. I want more time with Shanna and Calli. Surely feeling like you have good reason to get up every day is enough reason to consider yourself one of the lucky ones?

Am I ever going to stop feeling like I was put in a movie of someone else’s life?

Bullying

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I sort of feel like “she’s bullying me” is the clarion call of my childrens’ generation the way “it’s not fair” was for my generation. They do not understand what they are complaining about and it sounds pretty funny to me most of the time. “No, actually your sister doing something you dislike isn’t the same thing as bullying.”

We are starting to run into bullying situations. I have a heavy heart as I think about how much like me my daughter is. Shanna can be a bully. The other day at a park a bigger girl told Shanna to be on “guard duty” so Shanna beat the shit out of the little boys who wanted to come to that part of the playground. Luckily she is very bad at fighting. But she hit the little boy in the face.

I intervened about as fast as I physically could. We talked there and ended up coming home early because the excuse, “The bigger girl told me to do it” isn’t one that buys you a lot of slack with me.

I believe that one of the things I said as I huffily dragged her from the park (she was screaming about how I was bullying her by not letting her play) was, “It is despicable to hit someone half your size as part of a game. I don’t care if you think I’m bullying you. You can go home and play alone if you are going to act like that.”

I haven’t lost any sleep over enforcing the boundary but I do worry about her growing up. She’s going to have to make a lot of the same mistakes I’ve made.

I was a vicious bully.

I worry about my privileged little princess punching down. I was not starting life in a position much like Shanna’s. My behavior and hers… really shouldn’t be comparable. I fought all the time because I was being viciously beaten and raped. My kid has never had a traumatic experience. But she seems to feel almost as much need to hit and be defensive. I’m not sure what to do with this. I keep offering martial arts and she is turning me down.

I believe that “bullying” or punching down behaviors need to be watched forever. One needs to engage in self-monitoring. Everyone punches in some direction–never punch down or you are a bully. That’s just a rule in my little world. You can’t punch down. If you do you are hurting people who are less able to defend themselves than you are and that is poor sportswomanship.

Wow. Spell check let me have that word? Cool.

Shanna is trying to use physical intimidation a lot more in general lately. That is not going as well as she might hope. If you shove your face in my face and growl at me I’m very likely to grab the shirt of your outfit and make sure I win that intimidation game. I tend to win even with people who are bigger than me. Shanna doesn’t have a chance. I’m scary when I feel threatened. I had to learn the skill.

Part of the reason I don’t hit my kids is because I do not want to punch down. They are already so very helpless compared to me–less helpless by the day but still–that hitting them at all would be punching down. Always.

It is going to be quite a journey for Shanna and I to learn how to be bossy together without being bullies. Bossy is good. Bossy is great. Bullying is not acceptable.

People learn things best by doing something wrong and observing the consequences. I need to be patient with my children and with me. We have to mess up or we won’t learn. Sometimes, that messing up involves punching down when you don’t understand that it is a problem.

I’m looking forward to when my kids are old enough for the really mess-with-you-mind teaching. I want to talk about the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment. I want to talk about obeying orders. I want to talk about what it means to hurt someone else on the say-so of your “boss”.

But I’ll wait to mess with their minds for a few more years. Puberty will be so much fun.

There is a difference between having engaged in bullying behavior and being a bully. It is the same dichotomy that exists in racism, sexism, ageism, ableism. There is space for an ignorant person to say something or do something without a larger scope of targeted behavior. When does someone jump the tracks into “being” that kind of person.

I’m not sure. But I’ve met people who are on that side of the line. It’s like pornography–I know it when I see it.

All the woo

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Went back to see the woo doctor today. We have officially “treated” so I am “clear” on: eggs, dairy, sugars, grains, msg, oils/fats, and my stomach acids.

We have “treated” but I’m not yet “clear” on: yeast, herbs (cilantro and garlic), nuts, and digestive enzymes.

As far as he is concerned, I should avoid the stuff he treated today for another 24 hours then I can go to town. He says I can start wheat and dairy today.

I’m having feelings. Worries. Concerns.

Still left to treat are: chocolate, corn, fruits, pollens, grasses, weeds, blood components, my own hormones (doesn’t shock me that I might have problems there), neurotransmitters, vitamins, temperature stimuli…

Oh the festivity continues. But I’m eating rice pudding so my life isn’t all bad.

Day 32

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Breakfast: gf pancakes, maple syrup, potatoes, turkey bacon

Lunch: rice pudding made with arborio rice, rice milk, maple syrup, nutmeg, cinnamon

Dinner: lamb shank with olive oil, ghee, rosemary, sage, carrots, plus potatoes (with more ghee–you can make a reasonable mashed potato this way), brussels sprouts (the brussels sprouts were my favorite part of dinner–wacky.)

Dessert: blueberry sorbet and a gf peanut butter cookie. Because my husband loves me.

1:45pm- poop, solid, very dark brown, multiple hard pieces

6pm- long, thin, tooth paste-like.

Given that I’ve eaten it a couple of days in a row I’m going to add tomatoes to my “ok” list due to lack of reaction. Really I should update the list because it is longer now.

Good list:

rice, turkey, venison, lamb, chicken, sweet potato, carrots, cabbage, celery, bok choy, bell peppers, tomato, potato, brussels sprouts, broccoli, green beans, maple syrup, peanut butter, ghee, olive oil, banana, blueberries, grapes, cinnamon, sage, rosemary, nutmeg, basil, bay

Know for certain that these things are totally ok.

Maybe list:

pineapple, raspberry?

Bad list:

eggs, carbonation

I am of the opinion that I shouldn’t test any new food on Monday. I think I should wait until Tuesday. I’m trying to decide what to test next. I’m sort of wondering if I should test garlic next. If I *knew* one way or another about garlic it would make a lot of choices easier. It is shocking how hard it is to get food without garlic in it. If I can have garlic all of a sudden a whole new world of processed foods open up to me.

I think garlic might be harder to avoid than gluten or dairy or corn. Which feels wacky. I see the woo-Doctor on Monday. Maybe he will say that I am supposedly “all over” my gluten and dairy issues. That would be nice.

Mom guilt

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I’ve been pretty sick this week. I dislike the fact that I have spent a lot of the time I’ve been sick beating myself up for being lazy. Uhm, I’m not lazy I’m sick. It happens. But it feels like it isn’t actually ok. And it has dragged on so long that whatever amount of “slack” I sort of grant myself is expired. Just stop whining already.

But man I’ve been sick. I’m waiting to see if I’m going to get better soon. I barely left the house this week. I collapsed when I got home from Hawaii and I’ve barely done anything since. Some laundry. Swept the floor. Grocery shopping. Not much.

I want to feel better but I don’t know how. I persevere on the elimination diet because I want to figure out the problems with my intestinal tract. I don’t feel better yet. I feel terrible. I don’t think I’m eating diverse enough calories. The lamb was alright, but it would have been good with garlic or ketchup. Sigh. I’m really not doing well at diverse calories right now.

When I decided to get started on this diet I thought it would take maybe a month. Now that I’m on day 33 I think this is going to take months. Ew. Ew. Ew.

But! It would be super nice to go on the road trip next year without diarrhea. I need to feel better. Somehow.

Day 31

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Breakfast: rice cereal, rice milk, banana, maple syrup

Snack: peppermint tea, gf English muffin, raspberry jam

Lunch: turkey lunch meat, blueberries

Dinner: gf pasta, tomato sauce, soy cheese

6:45am- poop! Solid! a log!!

6:45pm- poop! Solid! a log! (greenish)

9:20pm- mostly solid, paste-like

Ok. This is good news. A full day of solid poop. I think I should try to have two or three days of poop before I experiment with food. Although I did add tomato tonight when I haven’t had tomato in a while. So maybe I have already experimented. And I had way more soy today than usual. Mmmm soy cheese.

Tomorrow shouldn’t be a lot of variation. Rice, get the damn lamb shanks in to cook promptly. Make more chicken stock so Noah can make risotto. Mmm chicken feet.

I feel like it would be better for humanity if I was locked in a closet for a few months. I’m just not very nice.

Tonight I made two pizzas. One regular one that I totally couldn’t eat. Then I made a gf pizza with soy cheese and I left off the pineapple and… It seemed ready to go. Then I was fucking brilliant enough to read the ingredient label. Eggs. Shit, shit, double shit. Eggs very clearly cause massive diarrhea. I’m not up for that tomorrow. So then I had to cook a third god damn dinner.

My attitude sucks. I hate food so much. I feel so sad and so bitter and …. man food sucks. I need to keep going with the experiment, because every piece of data I gather is useful but my attitude sucks. It doesn’t help that I’ve felt bad for a long time. But the whiny reason isn’t that important. My attitude sucks.

Day 30

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Breakfast: gf pancakes, blueberries, banana, maple syrup, peanut butter, grape juice, peppermint tea

Lunch and dinner: chicken soup

Dessert: almond milk ice cream (toffee flavor), err just a few bites. I’ve been working on the singular pint for a month now and it is only half gone.

2:45pm- solid, brownish/greenish, smooth, nearly a log. paste-like.

Today I am going to need to cook some lamb. I need a change from chicken and turkey. I feel like I am starting to go nutty because all of the sauce-type-things I use with meat seem to involve garlic and/or onions so I am not supposed to eat any of it right now. Dry meat is hard to chew and swallow. Even in soup meat is feeling dry and bleh. I want some flavor. Damnit.

Food is feeling really hard. But for the chance at less diarrhea… I have to keep trying. I’d like to have my butt stop hurting.

Improvement

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I only slept for about eight hours last night. I haven’t slept through the morning. I haven’t done much, but I haven’t been asleep. I’ve talked to the kids a bunch. They’re about done with me sleeping through the mornings. Physically it’s a mixed bag.

My ankle (The one I twisted almost two weeks ago) continues to be uncomfortable and sore. Kicking pants off causes it to hurt pretty badly. I’m starting to think I’m not going to be able to run the half marathon in two weeks. My knees hurt as well. That’s not an injury issue, that’s an inflammation issue. Also: doesn’t seem like a good omen that I am so dizzy that walking around my house is a problem.

I’m trying to eat more calories. I continue to struggle emotionally with having a very limited diet. It would be easier to follow the elimination diet if I could also cut myself at the same time but I’m told I shouldn’t do that. Instead I’m crying a lot.

Yesterday Shanna accidentally knocked some of my food out of the fridge. Glass bottles mean festive messes. And less food in the house for me to eat–which feels super huge right now. I said her name, I put my hands on her shoulders to direct her away from the dangerous mess (shards of glass are festive, yo) then said, “It was an accident, baby. Everyone makes mistakes.” Then I burst into tears and had a hard time not muttering/whispering that I don’t matter anyway and it has never been important to feed me and…. I slapped my hand over my mouth and sat down to just cry for a few minutes. Luckily Shanna was already off with her sister again.

I am having a hard time with how self-obsessed and vicious I feel. I think I need to continue the elimination diet–I had normal poop again this morning. But this is really really hard. I struggle with being kind and patient. I suspect I might have an easier time if my body hurt less.

It is better than it was. Most pain has settled to more like the 3-4 range with only occasional spikes up to 5-6. That’s improvement!

But I feel like shit. I feel like I want to clench my jaw really hard only I can’t because I’ve already cracked a tooth and I don’t want it falling out early. It is hard to consciously keep your jaw relaxed when you want to clench really hard.

It will be ok in the end. If it isn’t ok, it isn’t the end.

I’m feeling kind of scared that this elimination diet process is going to take many months given that I’m more than a month in and I have a long way to go. I am just about to the point where I can start seriously testing food. And I have the added confusion that the woo-allergy doctor tells me he is going to clear up my problems so maybe the elimination diet is going to be pointless.

Oh good fucking grief.

Days 28-29

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28-

Breakfast: puffed rice cereal, rice milk, pork bacon

Lunch: rice, soy sauce, grapes

Dinner: rice, turkey, broccoli, sweet potato (with maple syrup and brown sugar), grape juice

12:45pm- diarrhea

11:45pm- diarrhea

29-

Breakfast: fried potato, turkey lunch meat

Lunch: rice, broccoli, soy sauce, grape juice

Dinner: chicken stock, chicken, cabbage, bok choy, carrots, gf pasta into “soup” 🙂 (Thanks Noah!)

7:15pm- green, paste-like, semi-formed

 

I slept for about 12 hours last night. I have already taken a nap today. I’m not feeling better.

Or I’ll cancel plans.

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Today hasn’t been a great day for my health. I started out the day by passing out/collapsing in the bathroom. I tried to stand up from using the toilet and woke up I have no idea how long later with my head wedged in the corner between the bath tub and the wall because I fell forward. I’m lucky I didn’t slam my face.

I slept through a lot of the day. The kids woke me up as necessary but mostly I was unconscious.

I feel so bad.

Health inventory

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I am feeling excessively whiny. I am hoping that if I record the full whine I can stop repeating bits of it to Noah and anyone else who will listen. It is hard to not talk about it even though I know it annoys people to hear about.

Starting at the top, because I often do that. Head hurts. I have a headache in the forehead part of my skull. I have a raging headache in the back of my skull where I have my usual minor headache caused by looking down too much. I have a fractured tooth and that isn’t feeling good. I get a crown in just over two weeks. My TMJ (yes, this one has a real diagnosis from a real doctor) is acting up like mad and both sides of my jaw hurt like crazy. I’ve clearly been clenching and fighting the clenching and that makes me ache something fierce. I also have a ton of sinus pressure and I feel like I have a cold.

My neck hurts. The muscles supporting my skull are all corded with knots.

My shoulders and arms hurt really badly. Surfing was a lot of very unfamiliar motion and even moving my arms hurts. I can feel a lot of knots I’m not used to having. My range of motion is impacted. Surfing was fun but very hard. Luckily my forearms aren’t as painful as usual. (I’ll thank my lucky stars for that one.) I’m having a lot of general joint pain (I include the TMJ with that) and my shoulders/elbows/wrists/finger joints are all painful. It isn’t my normal “typing fucks me up” pain–it’s different.

My chest and upper back feel sore, like I was punched a lot. (And yes, I do know what it feels like to be punched a lot.) My abdominal muscles right below my ribs are still so sensitive that gentle touching hurts. Luckily the pain has come down a few notches and I will no longer scream if the kids idly brush me. *phew*

Then we get into the intestine region of the torso. Oh holy hell. It is improving! That’s a great thing. After the plane ride just about anything would be an improvement. I feel tender and sore. My lower back aches really badly, but I’m used to that. It spiked into much more intense pain when I was bleeding last week thanks to cramping but it isn’t as bad now. *phew* But my belly region is very uncomfortable and sad.

My hips hurt. My hips hurt so much. My thighs hurt. My knees hurt. My calves hurt. My ankles hurt. Seriously, my ankle hurts so fucking much I can’t sit cross legged. My feet are sore and tender.

Have I mentioned that I don’t feel good?

Tomorrow I will be blessed with a meal cooked by someone else that is within plan and multi-course and is likely to help me feel loved and taken care of while having flavor. Noah is still being my hero with cooking for me, but he has less experience with this range of restrictions. He’s doing his best, but it is hard to adapt to an elimination diet. Especially while he is still cooking different stuff for him and the girls that follow our more normal diet.

Today the girls asked the babysitter to make them ramen for lunch. When I smelled it I almost started crying because I wanted it so much. I am committed to figuring out what is making me sick, because clearly I took some inflammatory food out and then put it back and my body is freaking the fuck out but it is hard feeling denied food. It is excruciatingly hard on a daily basis. I feel like I don’t deserve food.

My friend told me it is great that I haven’t fallen into the “I can’t eat anything” trap and now I feel ashamed of myself because I totally want to say that over and over. I’m trying so hard to be positive. I think it would be easier if my kids weren’t eating my favorite foods in front of me while I can’t have any.

It is shocking to me in an ongoing way how visceral food is. I read people write things about how food is just fuel. Oh man. It totally isn’t. It is love and comfort and bonding and right now I’m shut out of my favorite forms. Holy shit this is hard.

I am trying to keep my whining to myself. It is hard. I’m trying to keep up with the whirl of activities but it is hard. I feel dizzy and weak. My friend pointed out this weekend that I am drastically under caloried for the amount of exercise I’m doing and she’s right. 17 days till the half marathon and then I will be cutting back my exercise a lot until I have food more under control. I do want to do this race though. I’m still upset with myself for paying for a 10k I didn’t do this year.

Tomorrow I drive to San Pablo. That will be a good trip. In the evening Pam is coming over. She’s about to head off for a long visit with family on the other side of the world so I have to store up my Pam attention while I can. Friday we are going out to Modesto to see friends for the day. (Luckily the friend I am going with is very happy to do most of the driving. *phew*) Next week I have another visit with the woo-allergy doctor and therapy and a massage. I am one lucky, supported person. The week after that I see the Kaiser specialist (I have low hopes and much bitterness in my heart), have dinner with a friend I haven’t seen for a bit, have a dentist appointment to get a crown, hopefully we will get to decorate the tree with the home school group, and Pam is coming over–all that before Thanksgiving. T-day we are staying home while I cry about not being able to eat a real Thanksgiving dinner. I just can’t watch someone else eat what I want to fucking eat and can’t. I can’t. I would be so mean and self-involved and such an asshole. So we are staying home. Then that weekend I run the half marathon.

December will be slower than November, for one thing less exercise. I’m not driving much in December. Other than the grocery store the only driving I have booked for December is therapy. Given that the kids have been wanting to stay home while I have therapy because they want the screen time I’m not even sure if we will be making the park days.

I could seriously use a whole month of not doing much. For one thing, I need to build the trailer that is sitting on a pallet in my driveway. Also: I’d like to finish the planter box project in the back yard. I have been so exhausted I have not been physically able to do the work. I feel pathetic, but bodies have limits.

I feel like an asshole because numerous people have asked me how they can help and I don’t have good answers. One friend told me to give her a list of foods and she would meal plan for me. I *can’t* follow through on that. Every few days I seem to be changing what is excluded or included because I have no real guidance. The best I can do is what I’m recording here. That isn’t great.

I don’t actually think there is much help I can get. I’m lucking in to going to someones house where they already follow a diet that lines up with my elimination diet. I only had one or two “no’s” to add to their list of no so I didn’t have to think hard.

I feel like I can’t think very well. I feel confused and stupid.

Despite feeling shitty I continue to be grateful that I get to be married to Noah and I’m really glad for my kids. They are so awesome.

Days 24-27 (Not really “on plan”)

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24-took Ibuprofen and pot.

Breakfast: gf pancakes, strawberries, banana, peanut butter, maple syrup, grape juice

Snack: yogurt parfait with blackberries, strawberries, granola, and orange juice (that wasn’t part of the parfait)

Lunch: cantaloup, watermelon, some other green melon, grapes, cheese, butter crackers, chocolate with macadamia nuts, and some pineapple juice (on the plane meal)

Dinner: 1/2 a turkey wrap, 1 skewer of chicken teriyaki and a few bites of rice

2:30 am I woke up with lots of solid poop.

3:00am second surprise volley during what I thought was just peeing. Not boding well.

10:45 am small pieces that shoot out really fast (I always worry about accidents when it gets harder to hold in)

11:40 lots of yellow diarrhea

On the plane I had terrible gas pain.

25- took pot and fish oil

Breakfast: chocolate milk soaked french toast with banana, peanut butter, maple syrup, chocolate sauce, black tea, sugar, cream (So damn good)

lunch: chicken fried rice with gyoza (almost certainly made with egg)

Snack: Dole whip with pineapple

dinner: more fried rice, one french fry

8:20am- light diarrhea

1:45pm very solid poop

7ishpm yellow, paste-like, lots and lots

8pm- yellow, only a little bit, mostly formed

10:30pm greenish, medium sized logs pastey.

26- took pot and fish oil

Breakfast: fried rice and gyoza (still tainted with egg)

Lunch: bag of pineapple, pieces of sweet bread, pineapple soda

Dinner: 1/2 a turkey sandwich, 1/2 a slice of lemon cake

Sometime in the am I pooped and didn’t record the time. There were many semi-solid pieces.

1:45pm- yellow, loose, lots of little pieces (I wrote people in the book. Ha.)

3 more rounds of burning, awful diarrhea on the plane but I didn’t get times and I was in the midst of changing time zones anyway. So much horrifying gas pain on the plane. Terribly painful bloating.

27- took nothing

Breakfast: fried potatoes, turkey wrapped in pork bacon.

Dinner: rice, turkey, carrot, cabbage

I felt like shit all day and couldn’t eat more.

1:45pm- yellow, mostly formed, in several pieces

6:30 pm diarrhea

7:30 pm diarrhea Burn baby burn

That brings me up to today. When I haven’t pooped yet. Wheeeee.

I seriously think I should stop eating pineapple. But it was good.

I’ll catch up on data eventually.

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I haven’t been able to talk myself into eating much today. I feel too awful. I’ve eaten breakfast and breakfast wasn’t big. But I’m managing to produce a very large amount of poop. I didn’t eat much yesterday either. Yesterday I ate: fried rice (about a cup), two gyoza, a bag of pineapple, a big chunk of sweet bread, half a turkey sandwich, and half a lemon loaf slice from Starfucks. And I spent the plane ride running to the bathroom for horrible diarrhea.

Today no diarrhea, but lots of solid poop. WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK IS WRONG WITH MY INTESTINES?!

But I’m pretty sure I should stop eating pineapple. My tongue feels like I’ve been licking a cheese grater.

WHINE WHINE FUCKING WHINE.

My body feels so yucky. I’ve done very little today. I feel very ashamed of myself for doing little. But I feel so bad.

So tired.

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I am so tired there aren’t many parts of my body that aren’t in overwhelming pain. A 5 is probably the average level of pain for my body parts with some pieces spiking to 8 and 9. I didn’t really follow the elimination diet in Hawaii–I had too little control over cooking. As a result most of the time I had the most heinous gas pain I think I have ever experienced. Double over in pain and can’t breathe bad pain.

I am much more motivated to figure out the food stuff. I’m going to get strict on food again and work through this puzzle.

I am not going to do the full marathon in March. I feel like a steaming pile of dog shit. I can’t eat adequate calories for the amount of physical activity I’m doing let alone marathon training. I’m hurting my body with pushing myself to continue to exercise long after every part of me hurts.

The surfing was rad, but I was in so much pain when I arrived that by the time I left I felt nearly incoherent. And today is worse. The abdominal muscles you use to push yourself up over and over on a surf board hurt so bad that my kids gently touching my chest causes me to shriek with pain.

I tried not to whine too much, I think I did ok. I did do some whining about being in pain, but I didn’t make it the focus of the whole trip. I still participated. I did have fun. I don’t think I brought everyone down.

It was a nice trip. I’m glad I went. I had fun talking with grown ups without having to filter. I was blurty and I over-shared a lot of things, but I rarely have a safe environment to do that any more. Luckily these are people who have been through the crucible already and they aren’t too freaked out by my stories. *phew*

I’m glad I went. I really want to bring my kids there.

Day 23

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Breakfast: gf pancakes, strawberries, maple syrup, grape juice

Lunch: turkey soup and homemade smoothie: (orange juice I froze from our tree last year, blueberries, strawberries, banana, grape juice)

Dinner: we went out. It was glorious. We went to a Mongolian BBQ restaurant we love. I had lamb and chicken and bell peppers and cabbage and bean sprouts and carrots and I feel like there was at least one other vegetable. Pineapple out of a can. Wheat noodles. Soy sauce, sugar, cooking wine, vinegar, a splash of bbq oil, I winked at the sweet and sour sauce but didn’t really add much. It tasted really good.

Yesterday I woke up at 1:30am with diarrhea. I assume Toxic Smell was getting even with me. It was so tasty I don’t care. It’s been a rough few weeks of sometimes having diarrhea but not getting to eat what I want.

At 9:50 am There was a long, on the thin side (but not pencil thin, closer to a normal log)paste-like log. So it is up and down in consistency.

I’m very likely to go off-plan this weekend. Unfortunately for you all, I will tell you all about my poop as a result. You’re welcome.