We Don't Need No Stinkin' Gluten

I've learned a new swear word.

It's gluten.

Sounds pretty awful, huh?

It's better if you say the "glu" part while scowling and wrinkling up your nose and then bite down hard on the "ten" and swallow it meanly.

This terrible-sounding stuff has quite recently reached the top of the 10-most-unwanted list and all my friends are swearing it off. They are giving it up for lent, taking it out of their recipes, and spending more and more time talking about how to avoid it. No more crackers or biscuits or scones or bagels. And forget about bread, it's completely off the table, so to speak.

And the sneaky little stuff is in everything. It hides out in soy sauce and shows up in pasta. It slips into toothpaste and mustard and ham. It's even in lipstick and always in pretzels and don't even think about cake and cookies and pie.

Gluten has become the new villain, overtaking cantankerous calories, frightening fat, and scurrilous sugar. And, it has plowed right over the reigning bad guy called carbs. Restaurants are coming out with their g-free menus and the GF isle in the grocery store is getting longer.

It's not that I think this new craze is a bad thing, necessarily. It just reminds me so much of the others. Last year it was low carb, the year before it was low fat, and this year with the criminal gluten I'm just left confused. My list of things not to eat is getting so long that I sometimes have no idea where to start.

I'm pretty sure broccoli is still okay. As long as it's organic and locally grown and pesticide free and... Well, at least it doesn't have gluten.

A Snow Globe Welcome Home

I got welcomed home from a work trip to Indianapolis by a three-foot drift across my driveway. I had to climb my way through in snow up to my crotch just to get into the garage and snow-blow my way out. So, after a long four days of travel and work, more than 9 hours of traveling today and an hour of snowblowing and digging, I'm finally home. I cut a swath through the drift only about as wide as my car, drove in, and shut the garage. I'm hoping by the time I wake up the snow will be gone. Or, more realistically, I'll deal with the rest of this drift tomorrow night.

I'm just making it known that I am DONE with winter. It's the times like tonight that I'm this close to abandoning the snow globe all together.

Tupperware or Theatre

Say hello to Aunt Barbara.

She's the nation's top Tupperware sales person, she's irreverent and sassy, and she's a 42-year-old Manhattan man in drag. What an idea! And what a way to stand out in a sea of sameness. I'd go to her Tupperware party any day.

Don't Crash for at Least Two Days

Speaking of cars, I'm the proud owner of a shiny new windshield. It's so damn exciting. I looked around at all the different styles of windshields and waited until the perfect day to make the long-awaited purchase. I will certainly miss the pleasure of shopping for windshields, but I suppose there is always next year when the helpful safety inspector will get his "rejected" stamp out again. I know it seemed like no one could see that little crack hidden behind the mirror, but thankfully the safety inspector guy found it in the nick of time.

The girl at the glass shop was very helpful as well. She was careful to tell me as I was leaving with my sparkly new purchase installed, that I should: leave the tape on the windshield for 24 hours, not go through high-pressure car washes for a couple of days, and be sure to not get in any crashes.

"Don't get in a wreck for at least the next couple of days," she said, "because the windshield could pop out."

"Great advice," I told her. "I'll try my hardest to not get in a crash for the next two days, or for the rest of my life."

Where Is My Flying Car?

The auto industry has let me down.

The biggest disappointment is, of course, not delivering the flying car I was promised. I feel this disappointment even more acutely because the advertising mascot for the flying car was George Jetson. In my young mind, I was quite convinced that if an idiot like George Jetson could get a flying car, then I most certainly would get one eventually too.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was made in some crazy scientist's garage and loopy Doc Brown made a stainless steel DeLorean catch air. In the 80s I was constantly being told that I was part of that bright hope for the future, so, for me it was only a matter of time until I was flying.

But somewhere in the middle of the 80s it seems that we collectively gave up on the idea of improving cars at all. Not only did we stop dreaming about flying cars, we stopped dreaming about cleaner cars, or more efficient cars, or really much better cars at all. I have my suspicions about what happened, but who knows what the real answer is.

When I was in high school by best friend's sister got a little Honda CRX. It was fast and cool and sporty. And, it was famously whispered around town that the little blue car got an astonishing 50 miles to the gallon. It quickly became the benchmark for us. We all wanted cars that looked just as cool and went at least as far on a gallon of gas. In fact, we younger kids were fully convinced that our cars would soon be getting 100 miles to the gallon. If not more.

It's rare today to hear about a car--any car--that gets 50 miles to the gallon. I'm sure the reasons for this are complicated, and this is not a complicated blog. But I do feel ripped off.

From what I can tell, the average fuel economy today is around 21 miles per gallon. That's exactly the same as the fuel economy rating in 1982. Seriously? No improvement in more than a quarter century? According to an EPA study, fuel economy of cars and trucks jumped from 13.1 miles per gallon in 1975 to 21.1 miles per gallon in 1982. That's more than a 60 percent increase in just 7 years. And those 7 years were formative years for me. Those 7 years created my expectation for the future.

I'm absolutely terrible at math, but it seems to me that if we could mirror that increase today, by 2017 our average would be around 34 miles per gallon. Still not great. Really not good enough. Maybe our energy should be focused on something else that would have even more impact. If I'm not going to get my fuel efficient flying car, then at least I should get a car that does something exceptional.

Maybe go on land AND on water. (I was convinced as a child that my uncle had two cars that could drive on water. But that's a story for another time.)

Or maybe we could just give up on gasoline powered cars all together. I want my car to run on water. Or potato peels. Or cow manure. And, while we are at it, I still want it to fly.

Were So Gallantly Singing

I seem to be on some kind of video binge lately, but this is pretty spectacular. The two girls on the right are 6 years old, the two in the center are 7, and the one on the left is 8. Amazing!

Because It's Fun

Turns out, I just need more fun in my life!



Something I need to remember. I'm nearly always motivated by fun.

Laughter is the Best Downward Dog

Knock knock
Who's there?
Yoga
Yoga who?
Yoga to try this, it feels amazing.

I pulled together a little make-shift yoga studio in my unfinished basement with a big bolt of cool fabric for the walls and some smelly candles for lights. On most days that space is used by my friends and I for a nice, relaxing, and rejuvenating yoga class taught by our favorite yogini. Tonight, however, the class was taught by a hokey DVD instructor and was made up of me, my sister-in-law, and my 9-year-old nephew who couldn't stop laughing about us sticking our bums in the air for downward facing dog. Now I have the giggles about it. I'm not sure I will be able to keep a straight face the next time I try that yoga pose. It might be kind of like trying not to laugh during church.

Turns out there really is a form of yoga called laughter yoga. And here I thought Jeremy and I made it up.

Winter Already?

It snowed today. It's definitely October and not May. Where did summer go?

May I Have This Maypole Dance?

It's May Day or Beltane and I don't have a Maypole. Does anyone do that any more? I remember doing a Maypole dance when I was a little girl. I finally was allowed to wear the pretty yellow dress I got as a flower girl at my uncle Ross' wedding and I had ringlets and daisies in my hair. The yellow dress was long and twirly and shiny and satiny, and I felt like a princess. May Day was a liberating joyous day when I could let my inner girly girl out and carry around baskets full of flowers.

Shortly after the days of that yellow dress, all my girly tendencies were carefully hidden away and I was recreated into a pseudo tom boy. It was foreign territory to me. I still wanted to wear dresses and lace and ribbons, but at my school it was very uncool to wear a skirt. It hadn't been many years since girls were forced to wear dresses to school and we were all reveling in the new-found freedom of looking exactly like the boys. My mom still wanted me to go to school with my long blonde hair in perfect ringlets, but the girly girls were considered freaky and I had to play kickball just to try to fit in. So, I tied up the curls my mom had spent hours carefully arranging and pretended I thought dolls were stupid and playing house was downright boring. I ran around and tried to keep up with the boys and not even look at the flowers.

It look me many years to embrace that girl again. Mostly because I am tall for a girl (kinda tall even for a guy), I played volleyball and showed up at track and pretended to be that tom boy I was supposed to be. Now I just wish I had that yellow dress in my size and some pretty daisies for my hair. Oh, and a Maypole with cute boys to dance with.

P.S. Happy birthday to my friend Bonnie who is the real Queen of the May.