My magic gluten-free miracle cure apparently takes more than three weeks to work. I got slammed with three different mini-sicknesses (granted, one was a canker sore, but holy COW  this was a bad one) in one week, and on my birthday, no less.

I turned 27, which signals the beginning of the end. Did you know that? Women’s bodies peak in beauty and fitness at the tender age of 26. I heralded the occasion with my special sick-in-bed hair, red nose, and saggy sweatpants. I will not let that knowledge defeat me of course, but it is too bad that I only found that out when I had three days of being 26 left. I would have appreciated being that age so much more! But really– bodies that work, healthy food, and opportunities to work out are blessings that so many miss out on. 27 will be my year of gratefulness, then!

To be fair, I had significantly overdosed on Christian music as a kid. Also, to be fair, almost every Christian song on the  radio is indistinguishable from the next. But in my predictable reactionary swing the other way, I basically condemned the whole genre as dumb (Sandra and Indelible Grace excluded, ob-viously). That a sheltered kid went to college and swung here and there is not news, nor that I got arrogant about my new knowledge. I thought everything I thought was new, of course.

I read on facebook an old acquaintance’s sarcastic comment about avoiding churches that would be “certain-popular-Christian-artist hell.” I understand the thought, but the disdain for family bothers me. That’s something I might have said in my eagerness to mock: may I ever appear informed and distanced from the simple.

When I went to Peru, and fell in love with Pocho, he was just entering seriously into the things of God. He was excited, fresh, and full of thoughts about God and others. He loved music and was thrilled to discover afresh current Christian music.

I was thinking, “Hey baby, let’s find Truth in this indie song,” and he was thinking, “Wow, this great band is singing about God and I love it.”

As a hardcore people-pleaser, it’s so strange to love someone who loves things like that, without stopping to consider if they are sufficiently original, politically correct, and avoid undesirable connections.

In my eagerness to escape the evangelical subculture and its flaws, I considered many things, and specifically of Christian music, not just as something to better, but stupid. Sometimes things ought to be labeled stupid, but it is very hard for someone young like me to distinguish between “That is dumb” and “That is dumb– and I am better.”

I was humbled to be with Pocho and see so visibly my arrogance. I watched him get a wobbly youth group off the ground and form a band, where I remembered to worship using simple words, too.

Don’t think I am saying we must embrace mediocre expressions of Christianity. I think true Christianity should produce truly great art. I think Christians should lessen the great division between sacred and secular, and instead search for the big three– Beauty, Goodness, and Truth.

I just see so much arrogance in my generation, considering ourselves so specially enlightened because we took some classes and read some books. I think we would do well to spend some time in the trenches with people who are not so inundated with Christian resources, or those who have not been privileged with hours to spend reading and dissecting theology. I’m a lover of hymns and liturgy, but Jesus seemed to have a lot to say about fancy people with fancy words.

Most of Christian music could be more original, less commercial, etc. etc., but the fact is that is blesses and encourages countless believers every day. The fact is I live in a place where I can turn on the radio and hear songs sung to God, while so many believers in so many countries  go hungry for encouragement.

Of course I cringe frequently listening to the radio, and sometimes in churches. But as someone who has the richness of literally hundreds of Bible verses forever stuck in her mind from Christian kids’ music, I can’t pretend that I’m in a position to stick my nose in the air. I’m too blessed to get to be anything but grateful. It may have been quite the subculture with its own oddities and flaws, but hey!—we’re family.

I do feel better and unless I am imagining it I think I have more energy. This girl needs her 8 hours. I used to always  feel sluggish, no matter how much sleep I got. Now I get out of bed way more easily, and my butt to the gym much more easily. Still waiting on the mental alertness to kick in as yesterday I found myself in Concord having left my purse at school and with a gas tank on E… you can’t always win!…

I guess I like this because instead of fighting a battle against junk food, my mind is on what good things I can get in a day. My tastes have already starting changing too, and I crave the good stuff more. Maybe I am just not made for middle ground.

We are moving in less than a month and I can’t wait to tell this teeny tiny classroom goodbye!

This is with several kids missing. Not as bad as some of the classrooms I saw in Peru, but definitely claustrophobic. Also, a bit dangerous as more than one teacher has literally tripped and  fallen (to take this picture I had to cram myself into the corner and still cut out a child in the other corner).

Look at all my boys!…

My gallbladder started acting up recently.

What a terrible name for an organ!– right up there with the word bile– and one I had never given any thought to, until last week when I got a bad pain in my stomach and right shoulder. Pocho did not work his usual crazy weekend hours and we had plenty of time to drink and eat with friends. I don’t drink much, but we had a friend from Mexico in our kitchen mixing tequila and orange juice I think and so naturally I took advantage. Then we had a huge barbecue at church, and to make a long story short, I pigged out. (Heh, heh. Yes I know.)

Any-how, come to find out alcohol and fatty foods are huge triggers for that little and so-unfortunately-named-organ, and boy did it let me know the following Monday. (My body usually waits to punish me and get sick until I’m in the middle of teaching, just as a special touch.) I also have been getting yucky headaches and migraines, which I never get.

My Mom, who happens to be a brilliant nurse,  is the best. She and I sat down and researched and came up with a pretty solid theory: I have a gluten sensitivity or intolerance, which was exacerbated by going on the Pill for a while and maybe stress, all of which are rough on the gallbladder. Also, I probably have an excess of estrogen (yet another great word!).

Why am I telling you this? Two lengthy reasons:

1) Ladies, be wary of the Pill! I know, I know. Allllll the research says the Pill is perfectly safe and every doctor I’ve ever talked to expresses complete confidence in it. But my mother did not raise me on whole wheat and no microwaves to let me trust something that comes in with synthetic progesterone and estrogen and changes hormones which happened to be functioning just fine.

I do not have the stats here to back myself up, because that would take so long and I don’t have any credentials to be talking about this anyway. You can google it if you want (xenohormones and xenoestrogen brings up interesting stuff).

I just don’t get why we don’t stop and think through body-altering drugs after a century of experimentation with processed food, chemical products, etc. with so many disastrous results. An unfathomable amount of money is being made on the pill, too, and it liberated women everywhere, so I am not sure that we will get any good information in the near future. My gynecologist basically laughed me off the phone when I mentioned a possible estrogen connection and offered to switch to a different pill.

The Pill is convenient, yes, which is why I justified a short time of usage and thought it wouldn’t do any harm. Now I suspect the excess estrogen it produces stressed out my poor gallbladder to its breaking point.

2) This may be a good thing. If our theory is correct, then the changes I’m going to have to make were actually things I should have been doing my whole life.

The  horrifying list looks like this:

- Go off gluten for about 6 months and see what happens (hey, good thing I married a man from Peru, where it’s rice and plantains and potatoes, not a guy from Italy…)
- Avoid sugar and juices as much as possible
- No alcohol
- Eat lots of broths to get calories and good fats in
- Clean my liver out with an herbal concoction

I tried unsuccessfully to attempt this last week, and caved mid-way when a box of Life cereal took me hostage. From there it was downhill. Then today I went to the doctor, to see what she had to say. After I spent an hour untangling my insurance and waiting, she and I talked for five minutes, after which she wrote up a referral to go get an ultrasound at a radiologist’s office, where I will most likely be recommended surgery. Ack!  My insurance is not that good, and that is enough to get me serious.

Lastly– if we are correct, going off gluten may resolve my other chronic symptoms (fatigue, anxiety, cold feet and hands, asthma, weak immune system, bad memory, foggy thinking, and possibly mean-ness toward husbands). So if you suffer from those things too, you might want to do some research as well, or, even better, have a smart mom who can just tell you what to do.

If you are still reading, I will let you know how this goes. It is on my blog and now official. Good-bye, so many delicious parts of my life!

I had many a great plan for my life right now– married, professional, pre-children. The three main things right now were yoga, French and the piano. Alas, I overestimated my capacity for productivity. I pretty much just teach at school, then tutor or teach Spanish, and then collapse into a stupor of 30 Rock-filled night. What to watch now that I am caught up on Mad Men and The Office and soon 30 Rock? Any suggestions? I used to be a harsh critic of TV, before my epic downfall as a person began (i.e., when I became a teacher), but now I am so thankful to have something so lovely and mindless at night!

I am sorry that I write about teaching so much. Why do teachers talk about teaching all the time? Maybe it is because teaching has this uncanny tendency to drain all those things out of you that you actually needed to continue functioning normally the rest of the week– things like energy, speech, logic, reasoning skills, etc. Thankfully it’s a profession that I love, but I do feel bad that I don’t function as well at things outside school like friendships. It’s like high school again: ”Did I really just say that? Did I say anything at all tonight that I meant to say and really wanted to say?”

Perhaps it’s just getting used to the real world of a any job, where you do in fact spend most of the day saying things you do not want to say and might not mean (“Sure Mrs. W., I would LOVE to stay 30 minutes after school to discuss why Johnny got a red mark for tattling on someone who-yes, I know this is shocking– looked at him.”)

I will say it’s great to have a low-key husband who does not waste time dissecting me or my conversations. I think I underestimated the qualities of patience and good-naturedness in a man before I married him. That goes a long, long, way.

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We had never actually been in a car alone together until he got here, the land of enforced seat-belt laws and mostly empty cars. I picked him up from the airport, a blissful enough ride. Soon enough, though, we had a 30-minute ride together and it was then I realized that my man was not exactly a talker. What? What, exactly, is better than talking?

Shouting to eachother in the wind or smashed 5 to a seat was never good ground for chatter, but I assumed that in a quiet car he would jump at  the chance to engage in deep conversations and probe my mind. Hah, hah. After about 20 minutes of silence– and we were not listening to great music either, as only one speaker worked and was useless in the highway roar– the panic began to set in. Here we were, getting married in two weeks and already out of things to say.

Needless to say I did not call off the wedding, and soon enough we unconsciously settled into our own patterns of silence and talking (mostly mine). Then, Pocho got his license. It was a terrifying enough task, teaching my husband to drive while living inside of a city, and on top of that I realized any nice car chats would have to wait for about six months.

He would be driving in some awful situation and I would start, “Hey hon, what about?…”

With both hands gripped on the wheel, he would grit his teethbut patiently say, “I can’t talk. I have to concentrate.”

“Oh. Right.”

I am sure it has been good for me. For several months, now, though, we have entered new territory. He’ll sit back, doing that thing that guys do, driving with one hand. Sometimes we talk; sometimes not– I am much more skilled at that now.

Sometimes he even starts the conversation now. Sometimes, with his one hand confidently on the wheel, he’ll take the other hand and affectionately rest his hand on my knee. That, to me, is gold.

“i was talking that whole time___ .”

“oh. well, you know she’s not always well.”

“yeah, she’s the one who got evicted from the projects.”

“she did not. really?”

“yep, fourth of july. throwing chairs at the police. can you believe it?”

“my goodness. i knew there was something going on.”

my sheltered, sheltered life.

I’ve never had such a short summer vacation as this school doles out, but I am suprisingly eager for work tomorrow. I have actually been working on stuff the past several weeks because I love curriculum and thinking through teaching philosophies. It leaves me little material for small talk (“I am really convinced now every child should learn cursive first”) but thankfully I keep plenty of patient teacher friends around.

I think I subconciously designated this weekend as teacher mardi gras, with a side plan of doing whatever helps me battle the urge to take a nap. I had a great plan of slowly easing myself back into the early bird routine, which somehow did not work out. Instead I acted like I was in college again and so Monday morning is going to hit me like a train. Pocho is off playing soccer so the latest strategy is to stay caught in my 30 Rock vortex and just keep eating whole-wheat blueberry scones doused in syrup. It’s times like these when you are thankful for granny panties that can be simply pulled up over the new roll of stomach– so comfy.

(I made an executive decision in 2009 that pms is not a battle worth fighting, but unfortunately we have zero junk food/ sweets. Usually baked goods would suffice, but of course I went with a recipe that called for 1/4 cup of sugar to make a huge mound of scones and boasted, “No one would ever guess this is light!” I think that was a stretch.)

On an unrelated note: I always hear that one of the worst things for a husband is when his wife disrespects or makes him look foolish in public. Obviously that goes both ways, and because I hate that feeling myself I always vowed I would never do something like that to the man I loved. Especially when I ended up married to one of the kindest, most faithful and forgiving human beings I’ve ever known.

For whatever reason, I’ve been shocked how it comes so easy to do it– perhaps because you know the person so well, or because that person can make you mad and really does have an annoying habit or two. I don’t quite know why, but it’s really an awful feeling when you get caught up and realize too late that you publicly stomped on the love of your life for the sake of being funny or just plain making yourself look victimized or witty or better.

Anyhow, last night made me think about it. We were hanging out last night at Josh and Rebekah’s, talking with people I’d just met. Rebekah was getting teased about some old crush and somehow the conversation turned to my past drama.

“Uh oh, were you that friend who always had drama going on?”

The truth of course is that I was a big old drama queen surrounded by an ever-present cloud of uncertainty and wild fears and passionate crushes. Sometimes genuine and always made worse by myself, Rebekah was there for all of it.

And darling friend that she is, she just smiled kindly and replied, “No, it was just real stuff going on. She was fine.”

That is a real friend and that meant the world to me. I hope it’s a feeling I will remember.