moosh in indy.

Comments closed-The winner of the second Bedtime Kit is Sandra! Congratulations!

This post is part two of my partnership with Goodnites Bedtime Theater. I am being compensated for promoting a contest and sharing my family’s story, not for promoting a product.

First of all. The contest. You know, the one where you could win $2,500 for an adventure with your family? Well a little bird told me there are not very many entries so your chances of winning the grand prize or one of the numerous others are awfully good. Go to Bedtime Theater to enter and while you’re at it, download the free audio series/bedtime story about Iggy and his wiggy bed.

Go enter! No! Wait, stay here a minute, I need your help here for a minute then you can go…

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Internets, I have a secret.

I’m working my way through a possible food allergy.

The culprit? Perhaps gluten, perhaps a wheat allergy. Maybe it’s adrenal fatigue. It could also be cancer, or a third world parasite.

Regardless, if you know me at all, being allergic to the main things involved in baking chocolate cake is pretty much like telling a dolphin “Sorry dude, but you’re totally allergic to water.”

Tonight I made dinner that had finely chopped cauliflower as a stand in for rice. Not only did I feed it to the people related to me, I fed it to guests.

Oof.

What a bad time to come eat at Casey’s house, when she’s working through a possible gluten allergy. Kind of like going to Olive Garden and having them say “WHOOPS! SORRY! NO NOODLES! May I interest you in some garlic with a side of garlic?”

It’s probably just as bad as going to Olive Garden expecting olives and being very disappointed.

People come to eat at my house with a twinkle in their eye and stretchy pants on.

Imagine their disappointment when I serve them vegetables posing as rice, mixed with vegetables. And no dessert.

But I have had a rash. A horrible awful no good very bad rash. That burns and itches and welts and travels and is fairly unnerving. Thankfully my very lovely Jessica has recently suffered a very similar welted nightmare and told me everything she tried, everything that worked and more importantly everything that didn’t work.

I joked with her that God must like us most since we’re all Job like with our nasty rashes and vomitous pregnancies.

We also may have blamed our rashes on reality television.

She has come to the conclusion that diet and adrenal fatigue are most likely to blame which has led her to omitting anything fake from her diet, telling gluten to take a hike and taking enough supplements to restart a whale shark’s adrenal glands. (Do whale sharks have adrenal glands? Grant?)

Anyway, I turned to a local raw food healer whom I met through twitter and she talked me through an adrenal jump start.

(May I just say I love how the Internet has brought people to me so that I don’t have to suffer in puffy hives alone?)

Today I picked up my adrenal support capsules she recommended.

They are made from cow adrenal glands. And for some reason (taste? I think?) they add cloves and ginger to the cow parts in the capsule.

I loathe ginger (thanks pregnancy!)

I despise cloves (clove cigarettes, I was once young and stupid and impressionable.)

So dehydrated powdered cow parts, cloves and ginger.

If a 98 year old woman hadn’t stopped me in the health food store and commended me for not giving into the man and believing the lie that FDA has my best interests at heart, I would have left the cow caps there.

Three days gluten free. I’m really an awkward kind of hungry. I know I’ve eaten plenty, but there’s all these empty cracks waiting for chocolate cake and noodles. Carbs give you a very deliciously full feeling. For me, looking at gluten free recipes is probably similar to people reading their credit card statements, depressing, but it has to be done.

We’ve never been really crappy eaters. The treats we eat are almost always made from scratch by me. But we’re no perfectionists either. This isn’t a really dramatic change, just a sort of depressing one.

The cow caps begin tomorrow morning.

Forgive me if I moo.

This having an only child thing is a tricky business.

It’s one of those topics I’m afraid to look up on Amazon.

I’m sure there’s books about the subject. I’m even more sure the internet is just BURSTING! with ADVICE!

I want to ask her preschool teacher how obvious it is that she’s the only only child in a class of 12.

But I don’t want to know the answer.

Or maybe I do?

There are lists of famous people who are only children (Carey Grant, Frank Sinatra, Rudy Guiliani) also famous people who are middle children (Madonna, Donald Trump, Bill Gates) and of course the babies of the family (Drew Carey, Jim Carrey, Billy Crystal) I’m sure there’s also lists about only girls in families, only boys. Blah blah blah. Cody is a middle child and an only boy.

Needless to say he’s good with the ladies. And successful.

I am the youngest, I tried way too hard to be grown up like my sister way before my time.

I should technically be the funny kid.

And that brings me to Addie. When there’s only one there’s a bigger chance to screw up, you know, because there’s only one. You don’t have one to practice on and a second one to get right (because I’m sure that’s how it works.)

Eh. Sorry, I just have to say it out loud.

I’m really afraid of screwing up.

Thanks for listening.

Cody bought it the day before our first date.

Apparently he wasn’t getting much action with his grandmother’s old Barcaloungers.

I thought it was ugly.

It’s green.

The front pops out and it reclines.

We first held hands on it.

Our next date we had our first kiss on it.

I knew I was going to marry him while laying in his lap on it.

It’s where we first fell asleep together.

Two cats claimed it as their kingdom.

I slept through morning sickness on it.

I barfed from it.

I brought a tiny baby home to it.

That tiny baby leaked all sorts of liquids on it.

I shampooed it. A lot.

It moved across the country with us.

I’ve napped on it every Sunday.

We’ve taken turns sleeping on it, for multiple reasons.

I recovered from surgery on it.

It was the first thing we had to sit on in our new house.

It’s currently in our bedroom as laundry base camp.

Addie likes to hide behind it and scare Cody.

I still hate it.

I still think it’s ugly.

It has become worn out, parts have broken and it leaks grease on the carpet.

But I can’t ever get rid of it.

It’s our couch.

*****

If you were in Stephanie’s and my Inspirational Writing Workshop with Hallmark at Blissdom last month we issued you a challenge, to write about a couch. The full challenge is here if you want to play along (which you should) and once you do (or if you already have) link your posts up here over at Steph’s place.)

We’re in a breakfast rut around these parts.

If this is what your kitchen table looks like every morning then let’s help each other find more exciting things to eat for breakfast. You may even win a prize pack to help you over the breakfast hump. (Sponsored post. Unsponsored opinion.)

Just in case you had any preconceived notions that I am practically perfect in every way, I assure you I’m not.

My thighs are riddled with stretch marks and lumpy bumpies. I am covered in freckles in strange places. My face is covered with ruptured capillaries from severe vomiting while pregnant over five years ago. The skin under my chin is beginning to resemble that of a rooster. Without contacts I am twice legally blind, my two front teeth are fake and the rest of them are mottled from too much fluoride as a kid. My nose is big, my tongue is bigger, my upper lip is crooked with a scar from falling on my face as a child. I have chicken pock scars in strange places since I didn’t get the pox until I was 14. My knees are chubby, I have a big pink scar in my really deep bellybutton. My little toes point inward, my thumbs bend backwards I am capable of growing a unibrow, four chest hairs, three neck hairs, a sprinkle of whiskers and a shadow of a mustache. Don’t even get me started on the nipple hair. My hair is still recovering from PCOS where I started to go bald and when I look in the mirror all I can see is under eye bags and blotchy skin. My forehead wrinkles too much when I show emotion and I still get asked if my parents are home when I answer the phone. And while it’s only temporary my middle fingernail on my left hand is black from being smashed in a door.

To make matters worse? I found my first gray hair yesterday.

I still don’t even know how to properly apply makeup.

I have thighs I can wrap around my husband. I am covered in freckles that remind me of times I have spent in the sunshine. My face is beginning to show laugh lines rather than frown lines. The skin under my chin is one of Cody’s favorite parts on me. Without contacts my eyes are just as blue, I have never had a cavity. My nose can sniff out my favorite parts on my baby, my tongue has been passed down to my daughter and my lips are always up for kissing. I have chicken pock scars that remind me of my eighth grade year and my first boyfriend. I have knees to pray on, and scars from lessons learned. My feet helped me dance for nearly half my life and I passed my curly hair to Addie.  When I look in the mirror I see a mom, a wife and a friend. My forehead wrinkles up when I smile and I can make Cody and my mom laugh harder than anyone. And even though my middle finger was smashed it can still type out my thoughts and put on Polly Pocket’s stretchy clothes of death.

It’s still too fresh to find something worthwhile about the gray hair though.

So I never wrote a Michael Jackson post when he passed, if you’re into tech lingo and know anything about something called the long tail then you’ll know why I didn’t.

I was a hard core Michael fan, I was given a VHS copy of “Smooth Criminal” when I was a kid and watched it until the ribbon ran ragged.

I remember exactly where I was when I saw “Thriller,” my dad was making tuna noodle casserole while my sister and I watched the making of before watching the actual video so we wouldn’t be scared.

I also remember watching “Black or White” for the first time.

Yes, he got a little weird, so when he passed it was pretty surprising, but I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

About a week after he passed I decided to play some MJ on my iPod on a long drive with the moosh.

Dude, the kid could barely sit still.

She was IN. LOVE.

She couldn’t get enough. Still can’t.

I bought a DVD of his number one videos, oh how the kid danced while I did that whole “happy tears of pride and joy” from the couch. “Thriller” didn’t even phase her, unless you count being possessed by the beat.

I went out last Friday night with some friends so Cody rented “This Is It” to watch with her while I was gone (I had already seen it when it came out in theaters.)

Apparently my house turned into a dance party. While there’s no video evidence of Cody dancing, I know I didn’t teach her all these moves and she had to learn them from somewhere.

For the record, Cody never denied moonwalking across the bamboo.

the moosh told me today if I didn’t watch it I’d have to “just beat it.”

She then proceeded to dance.

My kid is awesome.