90 seconds of absolute batshit crazy

Scene:  A Sonic Drive-In Restaurant, approximately 9:00 on a week night.  Our heroine is patiently awaiting delivery of a magical Diet Cherry Limeaide (extra cherries, please) after Roller Derby practice.  As is fit, she is sweaty. She is wearing an ensemble consisting of bicycle shorts, a teal T-shirt reading "Bitches Be Trippin'", a purple bandana on her head... and pink KT Tape decorates her knee. Her socks feature C3P0.

In the next car-stall, an older woman is piloting a large black pick-em-up truck whilst maintaining a solid grasp on the chili dog in her right hand.  She hits the menu post with her headlight, and rather than stopping and realigning tests the boundaries of physics to see if her F950 (est) can win the battle. It can, but at the cost of her headlight shielding, headlight, and a portion of chrome plating, all of which shatter upon the ground, glistening in the security light and menu glare.

Then shit got real.

Ok, so seriously? This woman (whom I hate for her actions, not for her chili dog) is all like, just going on away, leaving the car debris. So I call out of my window "You forgot part of your truck!"  Because I am HELPFUL, you know.  So she stops her truck behind me and rolls down the window and says "Oh, it's ok! It's just my headlight!"

OH BUT NO.

So I leap from my car and grab a shard of displaced plastic from where it bounced off of my car and I waved it at her.  "This was under my tire."

She sits there....and takes a bite of her motherfucking chili dog while examining the glistening shard in my hand.

So I proceed to pick up all the bits and pieces and chunks of Made-in-the-USA-Pickup-Truck, WHILST carrying on an improv monologue on how SOME PEOPLE just leave their trash lying around to puncture tires and ruin nice evenings and SOME PEOPLE could get out of their damn trucks... and I carried them over to her.  At which point she quickly handed off her chili dog to the passenger, which is a damn fine thing because had her hands not been free, she'd have been catching shattered plastic bits in her lap, and probably, that damn chili dog.

She did say thank you, though. I'm not sure if she was grateful because I gave her back her headlight or because I did not punch her in the throat, because I suspect that my appearance was pretty damn frightening... that lighting is never complimentary in those parking lots, you know.

Scene:  The carhop arrives with a Diet Cherry Limeaide and a perplexed expression on her face.  Was the confusion because the patron was out of the car or because the menu one stall over was askew, unlit, and scratched to hell and beyond?  Who knows.  Our Heroine was happy to point out that the black pick-em-up truck was getting on about their hitting and running now that their trash had been dealt with.  And then there was Diet Cherry Limeaide, and all was good.

---End Scene---

This post not sponsored or endorsed by Sonic Restaurants.

Didn't even have to use my AK...

TCK's first bout of the season- an away bout in Mandeville, LA, was a wonderful success.  We won, but I'm mostly happy about the way that we actually worked together as a cohesive team in regards to strategy and smart game play.  We made some progress in this direction towards the last part of last season, but two months of really focusing on these details in addition to all the other things at practice really did pay off. 

There is always more work to do, though, and I'm excited to see what comes next.

Cards Against Humanity will be going with me to every single bout for the rest of my life.

It was, indeed, a good day.

--

I'm somewhere at the end of a month of being a really-truly nonsmoker. I've gotten to that shitty point where I don't like how I smell when I leave a bar.  The upside is that it's also the point where the flowers in my office make the place smell amazing, so there's always a bright side.

Gluten free-vegetarian is not nearly as dramatic or difficult as I expected.  I don't wanna try vegan- I love my eggs and cheese- but I'm feeling amazing.  I miss fish, though.  Fish may be coming back at the end of Lent.  My GF trial is technically over on my birthday later this month, but I think I may keep it.  On Feb 1 my Glomular Filtration Rate (indication of renal function) had improved by 2%.  That could be because of the GF, or because of any number of variables, but I don't miss wheat and I've figured out that by packing a bag like a toddler's mother would do, the inconvenience factor is pretty low.

--

Don't trouble trouble, right?  I've identified that my presence on OKCupid was just adding to my stress level.  I don't want to be a bitch, but the volume of illiterate and/or married men contacting me were starting to not only piss me off but also shade my self perception.  I've always felt that dating profiles that present with a laundry list of "Do not contact me IF:" items came off as horribly negative, but I was starting to see the appeal.  So... I've killed that shit and set my account to disabled. Maybe for a week, maybe forever. Who knows?  I feel better, and I'm not experiencing anxiety when I see "DoucheBag8478 sent you a message!" in my email or on my phone.

I get cranky when I'm sick.

5 people just made my "stab you in the eye with a stick" list for "liking" my sickness.

Clearly, I need to be in bed with some nice hot gluten-free soup... which, for the record?  Isn't nice.

...and then my email ads tried to sell me fake macaroni, and I suddenly hated the world.

I started the Gluten Free clinical PKD study yesterday.

Compared to the Tolviptan study, this is a cake walk (HA! No cake. EVER).  That study had an awful lot of guidelines and checkups and MRIs and fatigue and work.  It was also a paid study.

The GF study is not paid; it is completely voluntary. I signed on for two months of honest food logging (and I can use Sparkpeople for that); weekly weigh-ins, and a round of pre-and-post bloodwork and ultrasounds.  I don't have to avoid items that are processed in gluten-y facilities, and if I fall off the wagon I'm just supposed to be honest, recover, roll on.  It's basically like getting to do Weight Watchers with the same accountability factors and no actual paying for Weight Watchers!  SCORE, right?  I mean, Yay! Renal Health! and all, but I really wouldn't be sad if I lost the 20-ish lbs I've gained back since I quit WW.

No beer.
No whiskey.
No bread.
No pasta.
No cake.
No breaded fried things.

But hey... bananas have no gluten. I love bananas!
Bananas are boring.

I planned on doing a bit of prep for this, but with holidays and my dad being over and everybody in the damn WORLD having the flu, I'll admit that I did not spend the weekend thoughtfully poring over GF cookbooks and writing immaculate menus and pre-cooking garbanzo beans.  I spent it eating pizza, drinking beer, and napping, and I played some games with some friends and the nephews.  It ended up being a good weekend but Monday morning I was not so prepared.

#1 piece of advice given to baby GFers?  "Keep almonds in your purse!"

Oh, yeah.... I'm allergic to those.

So yesterday, I ended up eating all day and feeling the presence of my bread-addicted tapeworm despite it. The internet/books say that that is a normal product of the transition, but I didn't think I was all that gluten dependent to start with. I'm probably completely wrong, of course.  Today is feeling better; I made wiser morning decisions and packed a survival kit of peanuts and carrots and a banana.  I am trying to completely ignore GF Convenience Foods; they'll probably taste like hippies, and if I can work on culling out as much processed stuff as possible I'll at least be able to feel smug, which is important with a big challenge.  I may try to con Aarin into baking some GF bread at some point, but I think I'm just going to view this as a form of Paleo and see what happens.