Chances are you know someone like me, who can’t have any gluten, and you think, as you’re chewing on something delectable, ”God, I hope I never have to go without my bread.” I seriously don’t hope that for you either, but I’m happy that the cure for my “disease” made me feel a lot better.

Anyway, going “gluten-free” wouldn’t be so difficult if I didn’t have a few other teeny weeny food problems to deal with. Namely, I’m also allergic to all dairy, eggs, peanuts, bananas, and cane sugar (and maybe almonds and asparagus, not really sure yet). I’m basically a vegan who eats meat, but no Kung Pao. Does that make sense?

I used to bake. A lot. Which makes sense now, because a lot of times you actually crave the foods you’re allergic to, and boy did I crave pizza. Which, BTW, if you’ve never heard Mike Birbiglia’s monologue about pizza, you’re missing out. Download it on itunes.

The good news is that I do feel better and I’m losing weight like a banshee. The bad news is that  I took a pledge to not complain for 49-days, so I’m trying to be all up-beat and positive about the whole thing while reading gluten-free food blogs like a porn addict. I’m not kidding about this. I could look at photos of gluten-free brownies for hours and contemplate whether it would be better to use date sugar or .

 I even considered starting my own gluten-free food blog, but then I decided I would really just go to the dark side and not think of anything else all day except for how to find the perfect sugar substitutes for baking something without eggs or wheat. I’ve already spent hours trying to find pure chocolate that hasn’t been processed without nuts or dairy or cane sugar. Good luck with that one. It doesn’t exist.

The other bad news is that my grocery bills jumped exponentially, which is weird since you’d think that now that I’m making all of my own meals (and I mean all of my own meals – I even contemplated buying my own grain mill this morning while driving to work) I would actually save money. However buying fresh, organic, and unusually hard-to-find foods is hard on a budget. But, I’m not complaining. No sir-ee. Especially since Doug has taken on my allergies as if they are his own, and is eating only what I can eat (what a man).

The good news is that I am eating all sorts of yummy things. Agave syrup, apricots, avacodos, strawberries, salmon, cherries, melon, brown rice chips, coconut milk, hemp milk, wine, brown rice cereal … hey, you get the picture.  People should be so lucky to have my kind of a problem.

Anyway, my sense of humor is back, in full force, and I’m trying to laugh at the fact that I just called our local wine shop to find some gluten-free wines (don’t ask – something about the oak barrels and paste) which made me feel like a freak. You never know, I might throw in a recipe section on this blog for Celiacs with a sense of humor (I have to admit, this is a very very small crowd with Celiac sufferers – mostly because they have a hard time getting people to take them seriously and stop waving pizza around in front of us).  Sigh.

 No complaints here.

In the meantime, I’m going out to buy a real journal. I haven’t written in one since I started to blog and frankly, I miss it. You can tell yourself you’ll burn it afterward and write all kinds of stuff in a journal that you’d never put online. You can bore yourself silly writing about gardening and no one will even care. Maybe somewhere in there I’ll find my sense of humor again.

To those of you who have commented and supported my blog, I really thank you. It’s been fun to meet other bloggers, some of whom seem like real kindred spirits, and to share thoughts with friends and family. So, consider this your cyber hug. We’ll meet up again soon.

We’ve been preparing the garden and doing our own form of early summer weed whacking. Doug is our resident Zen master dandelion slayer, bending over good portions of the day to pull them by hand from the yard. If it were up to me they’d probably take over the yard, but Doug is persistent.

Doug's dead dandelion pile

Early summer around here is a magnificent party, where the lilacs and apple blossom fragrance fills the air, and the mountains shine with snow on top of velvet green. It makes me want to write poetry. Instead, I soak up the fresh rain, putter in our garden, and root for Doug against the dandelions. May it always be thus.

But, my friend sent me a news clip from USA Today about the Gulf that made me laugh. In fact, I get a chuckle out of it nearly every day. Hundreds of thousands of hair clippings from pets and people are being stuffed into used pantyhose and shipped to the Gulf to help soak up the oil. This is the idea of Matter of Trust, a tiny non-profit in San Francisco that helps recycle and reuse natural fibers. You can learn how to donate to the cause at their website.

To date, I haven’t seen anything that confirms that cleanup crews will use the natural fiber booms, but the idea of stuffing our collective hairs into used pantyhose for cleanup does make me feel like there is a way our cats and us can help. The only problem is our rate of hair loss is not nearly fast enough for this process. By the time I filled one pantyhose leg with my cat’s hair it might be a month from now. This is not because they don’t shed like crazy, but mainly because I can’t get them to sit still long enough to groom them for more than five seconds at a time.

Anyway, if you’re wondering what to do with all of your unwanted hair, well, get your combs and scissors out, someone wants it!