The Life and Times of My Stomach

I have been blessed in my life so far to be pretty much food allergy free.   Thank goodness because I eat like a grade schooler.  My favorite foods are pizza, mac n cheese, grilled cheese, those old school cheap-o fruit snacks, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the like.

That's not to say I don't have more "sophisticated" tastes as well.  I'm all about the salmon, chicken marsala, and other "adult" foods.  I assume they are adult foods because kids eat things like fish sticks not grown-up salmon.  Right?

And I must admit that since high school I haven't done that well with fried foods in restaurants much to the dismay of my food loving friend, Beth.  But other than that I could eat pretty much anything.

However... bum, bum, BUM!.... over the last couple months, things have changed.  After eating (so most of the time) I have had stomach cramps and felt just not that great.  I mean, it has been to the point where I don't want to eat things.  Not even brownies.  And that is a travesty!

So, I finally, after much procrastinating, dragging of my feet, complaining to friends who convince me to make a doctor's appointment only to hear a week later that I still haven't called, made the appointment.

And, horror of horrors, the doctor took dairy out of my diet for TWO WHOLE WEEKS!  Do you know how hard it is for a girl who has a glass of milk a day, loves cheese, ice cream, cheesecake, cupcakes, cookies, lasagna, not to mention the above mentioned mac n cheese, grilled cheese, pizza, and generally anything with milk and cheese in it, to give up dairy completely for TWO WHOLE WEEKS!?!

Do you know how many products have milk in them?  A lot!  Pretty much everything!  Bread, a lot of dry cereals, pancakes, mashed potatoes, butter, pizza, mac n cheese, all the other foods I mentioned before.  So this has been pretty hard on me because I love food.  I mean, I LOVE food.  Sometimes one of the lady's at work and I will just sit there and talk about food.  It's been very hard giving it up.

Needless to say, I've cheated a couple of times.  I mean, how much can a couple slices of pizza bother me, right?  The answer, a lot more than I realized.  While I've been on this two week non-dairy clense, I have been feeling better (most of the time).  So when I decided to partake in the cheesy goodness that is pizza I felt glorious and vindicated. Take that non-dairy diet!  I'll eat whatever I want!  Until two hours later when I was rolling around on the floor clutching my stomach in agony.  And that was only a slight exagerattion.  I wasn't rolling on the floor.  I was in the chair.

Anyway, yesterday I had my follow-up appointment to see how this new boring food diet was going.  And since there were still times when I was on my non-dairy diet (and I really wasn't even cheating) that I still got/felt sick/bad/uncomfortable my doctor decided to take some of my blood (and it wasn't even a hot vampire taking my blood, just a middle-aged lady) and do a celiac test to see if I have a gluten allergy.

She's apparently going to try different diet changing means and blood tests on me before she tries "more invasive" tests.  I'll let you just imagine what that all entails.

But, on the upside, for Thanksgiving my doctor wants me to try to take some imodium before eating a meal that would usually give me problems to see if it helps to alleviate some or all of the issues.  So, on doctor's orders, I must eat mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and other foods that have dairy in them.  And that's what I'm thankful for this year.

Chicago Here I Come!

Tomorrow is Shelly's and my fourth annual Chicago Shopping Trip! I am so excited to take a day to walk around Chicago and shop with one of my favorite people. We've been going on an early November shopping trip every year since we both graduated and never see each other except for a couple times a year so I really treasure the day.

A really old picture of me and Shelly with Jayme because I just realized I

have no recent ones with just the two of us.  This must be rectified.

Every year I get a little braver about the trip as well. The first year I rode the Amtrak up from Bloomington and met Shel at Union Station in Chicago where she had arrived earlier on the metra. The next year I drove up to her apartment in New Lennox and we had breakfast and headed in on the metra. The next year I met her at her place in Lisle and we again rode the metra. (PS The Metra freaking rocks. It's so easy and inexpensive. My sister and I have also driven up and taken the metra from New Lennox or Lisle for a Cubs game and a concert so we didn't have to worry about parking or the fact that neither of us have ever driven in Chicago before.)

But this year is different. This year Shelly lives IN Chicago and I am going to be driving all the way up to her place in the city which she says is really easy to get to and not too busy trafficwise. We'll see. Either way I am excited and a little scared for a new driving adventure. I tend to get nervous around bigger cities but have driven on interstates through Atlanta (that really broke me in), Memphis, Scranton, Erie, and Nashville. I have also driven IN Indianapolis (downtown) with the directional help of Jayme and the GPS. I'm excited to see how I do with Chicago.

Atlanta Traffic

Whenever I do get there, Shel and I will be jumping on a bus, then transfering to the L and heading first to some awesome 25% off sales at H2O. 

Then we'll have to see where Chicago takes us next.  We will most likely hit up Water Tower Place

sometime during the course of the day and maybe head to Nordstrom's Outlet.  And we will hopefully find some really great deals.  I'm excited!