HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CARL!!! and other updates

Happy birthday to Carl!!! Can you believe he’s 25? A quarter of a century! It’s a little sad because we seem to have reached an age where birthdays no longer hold the same excitement that they used to. Yesterday when I mentioned his birthday to him, he had completely forgotten! We’re getting old. Anyways, everyone send your well wishes and good birthday vibes in his direction, because he so deserves to have a spectacular day.

Well, we have made it back from our trek to Iowa. I know that there are probably people in the world who look forward to getting back into a routine after vacation, but I definitely do not fall into that category of crazies. After the way today went, the thought of the rest of the week of work ahead of me is incredibly depressing. What’s worse, this trip marked the end of a series of perfectly paced exciting events; first was the wedding (and really, all the little celebrations and milestones that led up to it), then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and finally our second Christmas in Iowa. Aside from President’s Day in a few weeks there’s really no holidays or long weekends to look forward to for a long, long time. But enough of this pity party- in the wise words of Chumbawumba, "I get knocked down, but I get up again, you never going to keep me down."

And sometimes I get snow in my pants.

All in all we had a great trip to Iowa and I’m really glad that Carl was finally able to see Spirit Lake. AND I’m delighted to report that aside from the Harvest Cheddar Sun Chip incident I was able to keep up with all of my resolutions. My mom and sister have a nice collection of Firm videos that I got to do to mix up my normal routine. I’m a big fan of variety when it comes to my workouts so it was nice to have a little change of pace and challenge my muscles to something different. I’m really sore today! Lauren has the Firm Wave, which has always been intimidating to me because the box is actually a curve on one side, meaning that you have to work harder to keep your balance during everything. I finally faced my fears and I didn’t fall off once. I’m tempted to buy the kit for myself but I think Carl would kill me if we had another workout step in our living room. Obviously he doesn’t care enough about my personal well-being.

So what’s this week’s letter? It’s ‘G’: gluten. In all of my health and diet research I’ve noticed that a lot of attention has been paid to gluten and the effects that removing it from your diet can have, even if you’re not considered a Celiac or gluten-intolerant. From what I’ve learned, symptoms of Celiac Disease can range from things as serious as infertility and osteoporosis to more minor things that many people live with the majority of the time: fatigue, bone and joint pain, gas, depression, and the list goes on. For this reason it is believed that a much higher percent of our population is gluten intolerant than the number of people that have actually been diagnosed. Most people don’t see the need to go to the doctor when they just feel a little tired or achy. And most people certainly don’t think that removing wheat, rye, and barley from their diet will alleviate those symptoms. I can’t say for sure whether I’ll feel improved health by adhering to a gluten-free diet, but it can’t hurt to try. At the end of the ABC’s I’ll decide whether it’s something that I want to re-introduce, and in the meantime I’m excited and interested to see what happens. I’m going to dedicate another post this week to what I’m learning, because I’ve been doing a lot of homework trying to figure out which foods contain gluten and which don’t. I look forward to sharing my newfound knowledge!