Christmas!

We had a great Christmas at the Long house in Cary, Brittney was off work Friday and Monday, and is now returning home to Winston on Tuesday morning. Dad had off work the same days and is also taking off Tuesday and Wednesday to get some work done around the house.

I decided that this year we should try a new church for Christmas Eve. We're Catholic and so we usually attend Christmas Eve Mass. Usually is a bit of an overstatement as Mass has become so dry and boring (the Catholic religion as a whole, in my opinion, has become out of touch) that we rarely attend, and can't really even call ourselves "Christmas and Easter Catholics" anymore. I looked up non-denominational churches in Cary and we went to Triangle Community Church and had a lovely service. The Children's groups sang a few songs at the beginning, then the band took over and we sang Christmas Carols for about 20 minutes, had about 25 minutes of a sermon, and then ended with more Christmas Carols. It was fun! It's still new to me that church can be fun and something to look forward to rather than dread.

It renewed my need to find a "church home", I've heard good things about Summit as well as Hope but haven't made the commitment yet, so if you have a preference, let me know and I'll check it out!

Anyway, hopefully this week will conclude with a little more work getting done by me, and a little less sleeping than before Christmas.

It's been a while

As usual, life got the best of me and blogging fell by the way side.

I finally finished my exams, Hallelujah! Exam week is the worst, I decided that I'd be happier staying in school longer and not taking exams, rather than the current situation.

The past few weeks have been crazy with finals and Christmas coming up and lots of doctors appointments, but now things have calmed down and I'm at home (all of twelve minutes from my apartment at State) for the break. It's really weird sitting down in the evening and not having a list of assignments I need to get done, it's a good feeling, but I can't help but think I'm forgetting something.

I (finally!) met Grace in person yesterday (Grace's Blog) at her MILA party. I won't do it justice by trying to explain it, but look up MILA and see if you think some of the health benefits could go to work in your life. I'm hoping it will help with my fibro and energy levels, others have reported that it does, so fingers crossed! I had a lovely afternoon spent learning about MILA and getting to know Grace better, I also got to meet her baby boy, Jansci, and her parents who were in town visiting. Grace and her husband have a communal living situation with another couple (http://longmirenews.blogspot.com/) who have a baby girl, so I LOVED getting to spend a little bit of time with the little ones. I love babies! They're my absolute favorite at that age, before the real talking and attitude begins :-).

Tonight, I'm going to Lights on the Neuse with my parents, we're hoping it can replace Tanglewood (http://www.forsyth.cc/parks/tanglewood/) for us here in the Triangle now.

 Anyway...here are some pics from Thanksgiving weekend with the fam :-)

The last one is of my sister and her bf, Brittney and Bryan. Sounds good together, no?
:-)

I thought today was going to turn out to be a rough day....I missed my first class as my professor, for whom I have no appreciation whatsoever, locks the door promptly at 8:30am. Which this morning was more like 8:29am because I stood outside the classroom door and watched the time on my phone tick away from 8:30 to 8:31am....oh well. I had a restful afternoon though and a lovely evening.
Tonight I visited WakeMed Cary with Pogo. We're a Hospitality Pet team and we visit consenting patients to help brighten up their day. 
Today we visited a woman who had been involved in a car accident several days ago, she was being kept for observation but was still in a lot of pain from the accident. She missed her dogs who were at home being taken care of by neighbors so she really enjoyed getting to visit with Pogo for a while.
I wish Pogo enjoyed it more than he does, he does it for me and not because he particularly likes it. I don't think he minds the attention but he's a mama's boy and it gets tiring for him to have to keep track of me all the time :-)

We go every other Tuesday for about two hours, or until I can tell Pogo is done. Tonight was a special treat for him because we stopped for fro yo on the way home and he got his own doggie fro yo.

I have a pooped pup for the night...we'll see how long this lasts :-)

By the way, who else is loving this weather?! The temperature is perfect! I thanked God all day long for such a wonderful day. With my Fibro, my body has a hard time regulating temperature so when it's so nice out I really appreciate it!

Gluten Free Goodness

As some of you may know, I recently (August '11) found out I was gluten intolerant. How did I find this out?
Well I cut it out of my diet completely and by the end of the week I was feeling tons better.
Many fibro patients eat gluten free because it helps with fatigue and sluggishness. For me I just feel all around better. I think it's also helped my digestion and reflux issues.
So, I'm feeling better: great! But...I have to be really dedicated to this because now if I slip up and eat something gluten-y a battle occurs in my stomach.
If this is all it takes to feel so much better, I guess I can handle it. But I can't start thinking about how I'll be able to do this for the rest of my life. Luckily, I'll be an actual engineer (God willing!) soon, not an engineering student, which will mean I'll have money and no longer will be a poor college student.
Gluten free food is so expensive!
I buy a lot of it at Whole Foods because they have a big selection in one place, especially when it comes to bread and baking mixes. Most grocery stores don't do a very good job of identifying gluten free good and also have a terrible selection, so it's very time consuming to go and read labels before I can buy anything. Wal-mart surprisingly has a fairly decent amount of gluten free food, I found gluten free bisquick there! It tastes pretty much the same, a little grainy, which is typical of GF food, but to make it there is no such thing as just add water. It calls for oil, eggs, milk, butter, etc. But, still much easier than starting from scratch.
If anybody has any ideas on good gluten free food or restaurants with gluten free options please let me know!