Desperation, Oatmeal, & Apples As Prophets

As many of you know, I've been trying to figure out what is wrong with me for SOME FRICKIN' TIME.

In any case, I have been going over and over and over my food diaries and scouring the Internet for answers. The other day I was so desperate and loopy that I asked my apple whether I would ever get better.

I used to play a game in middle school where you say the alphabet while twisting on an apple stem, and the letter it came off on was the letter of the guy's last name that you would one day marry. He would of course be your One True Love. So I was saying "Yes" and "No" in my head while twisting this damn thing, and because it's an organic apple it was good and sturdy. So, I'm standing in my kitchen doing that for what seemed like ever, and when it did twist off (on "Yes"!) it scared the crap out of me. I'll have you know I looked right up at Heaven and asked God "When?" Just to let Him know that I don't really believe apples are deities.

I also superstitiously put back on a necklace that I took off when Finn was born, one I wore for probably a solid five years. I'm not a big accessory-gal, so once it's on, it's kind of....on. The necklace is part of a charm bracelet that my Grandma brought me back from Jerusalem, when she visited years ago. The other charms were unsuitable for the necklace transformation. Star of David: People would think I was actually Jewish. Camel: Who wants to wear a damn camel around their neck? A Cross: Boooooooo-riiiiiing. The Hand of Hamsa/Fatima: Startlingly pretty and unique for a pasty white girl such as myself. So, this little hand with a blue dot on it won out. I Googled it once and found out that it was (superstitiously!) meant to ward off the Evil Eye. Oooooooo.

 I digress. My point is that I'm tired of trying to figure out what's wrong, so I asked an apple. That's one of the first signs of lunacy.

And tonight, as a present, God let a sentence stand out to me during a rambling Internet search. It was something like this "...certain Celiacs cannot even tolerate oats." I read it while skimming, but I wasn't looking for information on oats, so I went back and clicked on more crap. Later, as I was reading through my food diary, the sentence echoed around in my thick skull.

When I first met CAG, I asked if I could eat gluten-free oatmeal and he said not to , just to be safe. But for the past year, I have still been eating gluten-free oatmeal and gluten-free oats because DAMN! They taste good. And so many good tasting things are off limits it seems to cruel to deny my tummy one little thing! And the labels swear up and down that their foods have been ELISA tested and made on a dedicated machine for this or that.

I think the time is ripe for me to cut that out and see if the "less than 20 ppm" of gluten allowed to be in gluten-free oats is really bad for me. I'll let you know if that makes a difference. BTW, I had a yummy bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon and nutmeg on Friday night. So....if it takes at least four days for something to leave your system, I'm on Day 2 with no oats right now. Sigh.

This link talks about the reliability of oats being "gluten free". There is some question about certain strains of oats causing more problems than other strains of oats. I seriously thought there was one kind of oat. But there's lots of different types of grasses, lettuces, etc. It makes sense. Wish I'd taken it more seriously from the get-go.