just be.

ermahgerd blerg perst!

Actual stuff to talk about! Tonight featuring correct capitalization! (WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?)

I recently started reading The Eight-Step Home Cure. I've been trying to get a handle on the clutter (an ongoing struggle for me) and disorganization (same) but also my unhealthy habits with money. I'm working with some pros on all this, but this book is helping me too. 

Last week was week one and had a mix of mental and physical tasks:

• Make a complete list of repairs and solutions. Repairs needed all over the house, the kinds of things that one might note when renting a new apartment. And solutions for each of those. I got through the list of repairs but am still working on filling in the solutions.
• Vacuum the floors. DONE. We have someone who comes and cleans the house each week, and she had just vacuumed and mopped most of the floors, but I kept in the spirit of the task (which is to become more intimately familiar with the house and its flow) by using a Swiffer throughout the rooms.
• Mop the floors. DONE. Well, Melanie (the cleaning person) did the mopping, but I kept in the spirit of the task with the sweeping.
• Remove one item from the house and put it outside. DONE. The main goal with this task is to break the seal on getting rid of stuff if you have a hard time with that. Another goal is to signal to the world that you are freeing your home of stuff. Or something like that. Anyway, I had a mannequin that had been just leaning against a wall for years, ever since I bought it at an estate sale in Squirrel Hill. So out she went, and someone took her the next day.
• Buy fresh flowers. DONE Wednesday. This is the easiest one, and that's good because it's supposed to go on every week. I pick up groceries at Whole Foods each week, and there are always tons of beautiful fresh flowers near the customer-service desk where I pick them up and pay for them. This week, I chose some gorgeous ranunculus. Vibrantly pink, which is unlike me, but ranunculus always suck me in. Just gorgeous. I cut the stems and put them in water in a mason jar, and I've thinned out the stems and foliage once. I also printed out instructions for a simple solution for water for longer-lasting flowers. This one has me excited, if you can't tell.
• Sit for ten minutes in a part of your home in which you never sit. Weirdly, this was the one that I took the longest to get to. Today I worked in the dining room all day (more on that in a moment), so that was way more than ten minutes.
• Look into earth-friendly cleaning products. DONE. Mostly. I stocked up at Whole Foods Wednesday, but I might have forgotten some category or other. I bought basically the whole Method line of cleaning products. 

So this is week two of the cure, in which I focus on the kitchen. This week's tasks?

• Clear space for an outbox (a space in the home where I can stow things I'm thinking of getting rid of). DONE today.
• Clear one surface and use the outbox. DONE today. Cleared many surfaces, actually, all over the kitchen. Check out this kitchen island!  (the stuff on it is just tonight's dinner and the recipe, plus the flowers from last week and the cutting boards, which have no other home, at least yet.)
• Clean your kitchen from top to bottom, and throw away old food. Buy a water filter and use it. IN PROGRESS. I went through all the exposed surfaces (a couple of bookshelves and the kitchen island and countertops) and the upper cabinets to find anything that I could discard.
  
  
  I put a bunch of stuff in the outbox
  
  and started a Google Sheets list of most of it and shared it with local friends to see whether anyone wanted anything. My main goal is to get rid of the stuff, so I'm keeping that really simple. Not chasing down new homes for anything, just setting aside stuff if someone wants it. And it feels good to see some of this help someone out. As for the water filter, Mr. Bee researched this a year or so ago and determined that a reverse-osmosis filter is really the only kind that would be worth having, for us at least, and is actually really wasteful of water. So we're sticking with unfiltered tap water for everything except drinking, and he buys cases of bottled water at Costco for drinking.
• Fix one thing in your house yourself. I'm not positive what this will be. If assembling something counts (I have lots of those on the list), then that's what I'll be doing--probably assembling the dress form that Annette gave me. That's something that I wrote down as an obstacle to last week's sweeping chore, blocking the flow, because it's just sitting on the floor in the way. So that's probably what this one will be.
• Run your hands over every wall in your house. This is another become-intimate-with-your-space thing. The author uses a very cool image: Imagine that you're touching the skin of a whale and your house is this living, breathing thing. I love that. Especially because almost all of our walls are blue :)
• Buy fresh flowers (this is going to be a weekly thing, every week when I pick up the groceries). Determine your style. DONE. Turns out I like something called "organic modern," which incorporates the clean lines and humor of modern style but the wood and other materials of Asian and other organic styles.
• Find a new recipe and cook one meal at home. DONE. I cook from a new recipe five nights a week. Tonight I made carne asada.
  
  Choose the date for your housewarming. Haven't done this yet. Eight weeks from the start is the first week in June, but I might wait a few weeks. Also? We've been in this house for ten years this month. Is a housewarming really appropriate?

So that's what's happening Chez Bee. I'm having a blast with it, even though it's really time- and energy-consuming. Today what I did was work in the dining room, which is where the outbox is and next to the kitchen. I used the pomodoro timer in my current task-management app, KanbanFlow, which sets up 25 minutes of work then a five-minute break, but with a 15-minute break every fourth break. During each break, I'd get up and do another bit of the kitchen clearing. It worked out really well for my productivity both for work and for the home cure. A++ would try again.

when you know better, you do better.

a couple of weeks ago, i discovered a sensitivity to carrageenan. i think. it's hard to know for sure, but i had been feeling pretty good in gastrointestinal terms, being faithful to leah's instructions for the cleanse, and then i made a smoothie that had an ingredient i hadn't been eating: cultured coconut milk, a yogurt-like substance that was so sweet and creamy and that smoothie was SO GOOD. but i was wrecked for almost three days. when i say "wrecked," i mean doubled over in pain, curled up in bed, diarrhea, gas, bloating, no desire to eat because that's just adding to the volcano inside.

so i've been studiously avoiding carrageenan, which is in a TON of things. mostly it makes buying milks (i use almond milk, rice milk, and coconut milk) very difficult because most have carrageenan added.

today i think i discovered another sensitivity, to either xanthan gum or gellan gum. both are ingredients in the trader joe's almond milk i'd bought a few days ago and have been drinking in my morning smoothie. and then i have spent most of those days experiencing those same symptoms as those i'd had after drinking the smoothie with carrageenan. (note: this seriously affects my ability to work, let alone to go out and enjoy life. fortunately, i have been able to take sick time for a lot of this, and i try to make up hours missed in the evenings and weekends.)

what's been really great about the cleanse, more than anything else, is that the possible irritants are so few now that it's pretty easy to spot a potential culprit. nearly everything i'm eating is whole, fresh or frozen produce; whole plain grains; plain canned beans; or these milks. so when i have a reaction, it's not too difficult to look back at the food diary for the past couple of days to spot a potential problem. the milks seem to be the villains so far. (fortunately, not every kind or every brand, so i can look for the okay ones, though it surprises me that even trader joe's isn't clean enough--only whole foods.)

so i'll be trying to avoid those ingredients, too. i have had a bit of guar gum in a couple of things and haven't had the same effects, i don't think, and i don't know enough to understand the differences between the three gums or whether the amount of guar gum was so small that it didn't affect me so much. but these bad boys are now on notice.

cleansing breakfast

the cleanse has been going on for three weeks as of tomorrow. mostly very uneventful, which is just how i like my life. one routine i have down is breakfast. it's a little time-consuming compared with cold cereal and milk (my usual breakfast before this), but it gets me most of the daily requirements of the cleanse: raw garlic, greens, flax, lemon, magnesium, fermented food, and a raw meal (well, if you count the garlic toast as a supplement and not part of the meal). plus it's about three cups of liquid, which is good for hydrating first thing in the morning.

first thing i do is start the garlic toast, which is how i get a clove of raw garlic every day; leah says that this has antimicrobial properties. or antibacterial. or anti something. anti vampire, i guess. anyway, i put a piece of gluten-free bread in the toaster and let it get going while i assemble the ingredients for the rest of the breakfast.

i buy garlic already peeled and separated into cloves because i believe in making my life a little easier with prepped ingredients when i can. it makes getting the rest of the cooking done easier.

i then put a clove (in this case, one and a little buddy because the little buddy was so little) and some salt on a cutting board.

then i use a cleaver or a metal bench scraper or a large chef's knife to turn the garlic into a paste by mincing and smearing, mincing and smearing.

i don't worry too much about getting it too fine. i love garlic. this just sits and waits for the bread to finish toasting.

meanwhile, i start the smoothie, which has approximately one million ingredients. i put a handful of unsweetened frozen fruit and a huge bunch of frozen kale (trust me: i have tried mustard greens, collard greens, and broccoli so far as substitutes, and all were disasters, so kale it is for me) into my blender carafe.

then i peel a lemon and put the peeled lemon into the blender.

then i add the fancy-pants ingredients: magnesium + calcium, coconut-water kefir (because fermented food is apparently helpful for the gut), ground flaxseed, and raw vegan protein powder.

appetizing, huh?

i then just pour in rice or almond milk until the gaps are filled, which just makes it liquidy enough to pour and drink. somewhere around now, the toast is toasted. i spread it liberally with this faux margarine, which tastes pretty good, while the blender does its thing.

when it's finished, the smoothie looks something like this:

i pour it into a grownup sippy cup because i spill everything. paired with the toast, it's a breakfast that keeps me fed until midafternoon, longer than any other breakfast i can think of.

clean-plate cleanse, days 5 and 6

feeling pretty crappy yesterday and this afternoon. like, as bad as i did on some of my sickest days. really bad cramps, lots of pain, clutching my tummy, doubled over, curled around a pillow as much as possible. it's the fault of the delicious smoothie from yesterday, i believe; specifically, the cultured coconut milk. at least, that's my suspicion. it has a variety of ingredients that i hadn't had yet during this cleanse, including carrageenan and guar gum, and nothing else i've had seems a likely culprit. anyway, so sick tonight that i came home from uke group before it even started. so sick during the day yesterday and today that i've spent most of them in bed in a fetal position wallowing in self-pity and self-loathing. okay, not wallowing in either of those things, just hating my GI tract. i haven't wanted to eat pretty much anything, either. blergh.

anyway, here's hoping that whatever it is gets itself out of my system soon, because i was feeling pretty good before that. and, it is worth noting, i haven't had a migraine since i started the cleanse. actually since a couple of days before that, i think, after i last ate dairy, if i'm not mistaken. which is freaking AWESOME. never before have i suspected that i had a food trigger for migraine. if this work with leah does nothing but uncover what foods i need to avoid to stop having migraines, it'll be worth every second and every penny.

oh. yeah. zero progress on the skirt. barely up for working, which involves sitting and working on my laptop, let alone anything else. gathered ruffle on the muslin is the next task in the project, and i'll be doing that for the first time, so i'm saving that for saturday morning, i think, when i'm feeling better and starting fresh. i hope.

clean-plate cleanse, day 4

yesterday was not my favorite day of food. these are things i learned:

1. broccoli is not a good substitute for greens in a smoothie. unless you want to drink broccoli-flavored goo. i tried really hard--i like all the ingredients in this smoothie, but together they made me gag. literally. i drank two large sips before having to admit defeat. so no greens in the morning for me, and that smoothie also had my flax seed for the day.

2. watercress is not as tasty with quinoa and adzuki beans, oil and vinegar, and salt and pepper as kale is. i like watercress, but i guess i usually have it as part of a salad with other greens? i don't know. it just wasn't good.

3. a fly stubbornly insisting that it is going to share that lunch with you can really spoil your appetite.

4. disliking breakfast and lunch to the point of not being able to stomach them makes for kind of a hungry day.

5. hilary's veggie bites for dinner can make up for a lot of food sadness. very satisfying and yummy, kind of like little hush puppies.

6. i'm going to have to either shop more frequently or buy frozen greens. fresh greens in the volume that i'm having to buy and eat them don't last a whole week.

7. someone needs to make a plant-centered refrigerator. huge crisper drawers, maybe root-vegetable drawers. built for this kind of eating. our fridge is kind of a chaotic mishmash at the moment.

today is already miles better. still the same quinoa breakfast thing is lasting me all week, but this morning's green smoothie is a berry smoothie, and it is YUMMY. of course, i think that some of that is because of the fact that the cultured coconut milk i bought is vanilla flavored and therefore has things in it that i haven't been eating recently, but i do not even care. it is so sweet and creamy and good. i have about five cups of it to drink today, and that is fine with me. later i'm planning to make either a soup with sweet potatoes or just eat a sweet potato all by its own self. friday, leah comes over to teach me to cook with some new-to-me ingredients, including miso, millet, buckwheat groats, and possibly avocado (blech). i'm trying to be open to trying new things, but i am a picky special snowflake supertaster, and that's difficult.

also preparing for a couple of meals out next week, which will be interesting while on the cleanse. dinner at root 174 (already left a message for the chef to talk about my restrictions) and lunch at the cafe at the frick (spoke with someone there last week about them--this will probably just be greens and oil and vinegar and salt and pepper, which is fine).

no progress on the skirt yesterday. work!

clean-plate cleanse, day 3

blogging so much because my life is so fascinating lately! right? yeah, don't answer that. really it's just because there are a lot of Things going on, lots of changes and new projects, that i'm photographing (well, if you can call them "photographs") and want to remember later.

so.

here is this morning's not-very-tasty-but-good-for-me-so-i-finished-it-anyway spinach juice thing:

a lovely color of green and not terrible tasting but definitely not something i'm going to look forward to for the next 18 days or whatever it is. but good for me! and i like to do things that are good for me.

also today i got most of the way through the muslin for my laura skirt. i'd have finished the muslin and maybe even gotten the real fabric cut out if it hadn't been for those meddling kids. i mean if i hadn't needed to come upstairs to look up how to do gathering stitches. that's a thing that cal patch thought i knew, which i don't. i mean, i know about them like i know about driving stick shift: i get it in theory but god help me if i try to put it into practice. at least i can't kill anybody with gathering stitches (as far as i know). anyway, progress shots:

first task of the day was to sew together the ends of the yokes (one outside yoke and one facing yoke). but, being the super sleuth that i am, i noticed immediately that the ends of my front and back yoke pieces weren't the same depth, which would look funny. so i marked and trimmed off half an inch from the bottom of the back yoke pieces and the corresponding pattern piece.

have i mentioned that i really love my rotary cutter? love it. it's magical.

next task was to sew the outside yoke pieces to the upper edge of the skirt pieces. i made this more difficult than it needed to be because i started out pinning the wrong edge of the yoke pieces to the skirt edge, but i figured it out before i did any sewing. also i drew no blood, so that's a plus. i didn't do a terrible job, but i did have a tiny unintended dart

where i failed to ease the curves together. this task involves sewing together two curves that are mirror images of one another, which is trickier than it sounds, at least for a novice like me. 

i also accidentally sewed the skirt seam allowance closed

which is *definitely* something that i would take out and redo if this were the real skirt. on the muslin, i'm not sweating it, but i did take photos of my mistakes so i'd remember and learn from them.

the next task was to sew the yoke facing to the outside yoke, which was relatively untraumatic. so no photos of that. bonus: still no blood.

spoiler alert: no blood drawn all day. i'm still awake for another five hours or so, but i don't expect to be handling any sharp objects. so unless jack-jack plays roughly with me between now and then, probably i won't have bled on anything. and that's a pretty good day, in my book.

but i digress: after sewing the outside yoke to the skirt and the yoke facings to the outside yoke, then it's time to flip the facings to the inside and attach them. this covers the seam that joins the outside yoke to the skirt and adds some stability at the waist. i think. anyway, this part was fun, but i still managed to do a not-very-good job.

i skipped the basting and went straight from pinning (shown here) to sewing. that's mainly because basting falls into the same category as driving stick shift and sewing gathering stitches. so i'll be looking that up tonight, too. (really? she wants me to pull out a hand needle and thread for this part? am i in prehistoric times or something?)

i did okay with this part. after the pinning (and, in theory or if you're a Good Sewist, the basting), you edge stitch the waist and the yoke part you just pinned. you're doing it from the public side of the skirt, which means that you can't see all the pinning you just did or the way the folded yoke facing meets the seam. which is *probably* why she wanted me to baste that beforehand.

whatever. i do what i want.

(i know that at least one friend is laughing right now because she knows that i am a goody two shoes who follows the rules. i do feel guilty as hell about it, if that helps. i'll be doing it correctly for the real skirt.)

so. anyway. i didn't screw it up too badly, but i sewed a dart down in the wrong direction (again, something i'd fix in the real fabric but not an issue for the muslin):

but overall it's not awful.

and, to finish the seams, i tried a couple of the stitches on my machine:

(insert "I have no idea what I'm doing" meme here.)

the zigzag stitch is the one i'll try to use, but wider and more carefully, i think. no idea what the other one is. go home, sewing machine; you're drunk.

so at the end of the day, this is what i have:

front of skirt, with ruffle piece waiting to be sewn on, and

back of skirt. the ruffle is one strip of fabric, 50 percent longer than the hem sweep plus seam allowances, sewn into a circle. now i just have to figure out the gathering business and attach it. and then i get to work on the real skirt! 

i rewarded myself for my productive afternoon with a yummy dinner of quinoa, adzuki beans, kale, and pineapple-mango salsa.

(the quinoa and beans are under there, i swear.) and i'll have an apple later with some almond butter. the quinoa was already cooked from day 1 breakfast, and the beans already rinsed from the day 1 smoothie, so this was super easy to throw together. nommy.

oh, and my PSA of the day: turn on the air conditioning if it's hot. i've been sewing in our dining room, which is on the first floor and therefore not air conditioned, and i was cranky and woozy and tired all day yesterday. today, i flipped on the room air conditioner in there and was happy as a clam. a sew-y little clam.

nommy meals

i forgot to mention the very yummy lunch i had on the first day of the cleanse. lunch every day is supposed to be brown rice or quinoa, beans, and greens, and then a piece of fruit. day 1 i piled a bowl full of some of the cooked quinoa from that morning's breakfast, some of the adzuki beans from the smoothie, a couple of leaves of kale, salt, pepper, olive oil, and apple-cider vinegar, warmed it for about 45 seconds in the microwave, and ate. really good and really filling.

over the course of the day, i ate an entire bunch of kale. and i gotta say, i felt too full to eat anything else by late afternoon. not bloated, just...like i could feel the food way up at the tippy top of my GI tract. i didn't want to eat on day 2 (yesterday) and ate pretty little, and i felt pretty lousy. just very little energy and still uncomfortably full. more in than out, if you will. so today (day 3), i'm really focusing on staying hydrated and following my instructions (i haven't eaten anything NOT on the list, but i haven't eaten all the things i'm supposed to).

anyway, the good news is that everything has been pretty yummy, except this morning's drink. every day, i'm supposed to drink a blend of two big handfuls of greens, a whole peeled lemon, flax seeds, magnesium powder, and ice water. (the powder and seeds don't have to be in this drink, but i'm supposed to have those every day, too, so i figured i'd just blend it all together.) not my favorite beverage. not terrible, but not my favorite. but it's just one drink, and it's just 21 days. and most of the days since i started eating more cleanly (which is about three weeks), i've felt much better than before. much milder and fewer GI symptoms and way fewer and less severe migraines. so the regular food in the house—the real bagels and kettle corn, for instance—is not tempting at all.

i am working on my skirt, still. got through the first seam of the muslin yesterday and tried out a couple of methods of seam finishing. both were pretty disastrous, but i think i have a zigzag stitch on my machine (task for today: dig up the manual, srsly) that will work better and more easily. i'm trying hard not to want a serger.

clean-plate cleanse, day 2

so far, so good. today has been much less of a production than yesterday. leftover quinoa for breakfast with some ground flax seeds sprinkled in (supposed to have a serving of those every day), and lunch is a ridiculously easy raw soup: carrots, an apple, almond milk, and olive oil in the blender, garnished with a sprinkling of crumbs from a package of kale chips. sweet and cold, perfect for a summer lunch.

other things happening at the bernard ranch and spa: drafted a pattern this morning for my second sewn thing, another skirt based on the first but adding a yoke at the waistline with facings and adding a three-inch ruffle at the hemline. it's the laura skirt pattern from design-it-yourself clothes: patternmaking simplified by cal patch. i haven't found a photo from the book itself and (duh) neglected to take one when the book was in front of me (now it is all the way downstairs and i am all the way up here), but it's an a-line skirt of any length with a yoke of any depth and ruffle of any height and whatever level of ruffliness you want. my favorite thing about sewing, as with knitting or weaving, is the ability to choose my own adventure with each item. this particular skirt will be in a beautiful dark grey (i know: SHOCKING):

we'll see how it goes. i've gotten the pattern pieces cut out of my tracing paper:

next is to press and cut a muslin to be sure i didn't screw anything up and make adjustments if needed, meanwhile washing, drying, and pressing the grey fabric before cutting out the pieces and sewing them up. this will be my first time making a facing (there's basically a yoke on the inside and on the outside of the piece to give it some shape, flattering to the waistline) and my first time doing gathers. it's gonna be a lotta fun.™

and the other thing happening around here is the uke acquisition. mr. bee bought me a concert version of my soprano banjo ukulele, a firefly, but it turns out that the workmanship and materials on the concert version just isn't what it was on the soprano, which i adore. i emailed some photos to the terrific shop where both ukes came from, elderly instruments, and they've spent some time looking at those, looking at the instruments themselves, and speaking with me on the phone, and they're willing to send fedex to pick it up but don't have a better firefly to replace it with, so i'm trying to figure out what to do: keep the concert firefly anyway, exchange it for a different uke (if so, what? the bass i'd been thinking of for my next uke is, shall we say, unwelcome at my uke group), or return it altogether.

(edited to add photos of food and patterns!)

clean-plate cleanse, day 1

so today is the first day of a 21-day cleanse i'm doing under the guidance of my nutritional counselor, leah. i've been eating more cleanly for a few weeks while we've been planning and gearing up, but today is officially day 1. 

this morning, i made apple-and-raisin quinoa for breakfast.

the recipe is super easy: boil then simmer quinoa, chopped apple, raisins, cinnamon, and a little water.

HOWEVER. because i have to make a project out of everything, i had no quinoa already cooked. so the first thing i did this morning was cook quinoa. cooking! immediately! but no problem. quinoa is simple! rinse, boil, simmer. 

HOWEVER. see: everything is a project. strainer (for rinsing) is juuust a little too small to hang by itself across the sink. so i'm juggling that and a measuring cup and trying to fend off a very curious cat. 

quinoa is cooking, and i realize that there are no greens in this, and i'm supposed to have greens at every meal during this cleanse. so i cleverly decide that i'll also make a smoothie—maximize use of the quinoa-cooking time AND have a snack ready for late morning. i am a clever, clever girl.

so i mix all the ingredients together for the first smoothie in my new (from leah) recipe book. blend. success!

it's not nearly so grey in real life; that's ice slush on top. but you notice how it's not at all green? like you'd expect it to be if it had greens in it? that's because there are no greens in this recipe. just coconut water, agave syrup, coconut butter, cacao powder, and ice. so i set that aside and thank baby jesus for the extra carafe we have for the vitamix, and i start the *second* smoothie recipe in the book, after verifying that it does indeed have greens in it.

so the second smoothie takes apple juice, adzuki beans, an apple, kale, and ice. again: everything is a production. gotta rinse the adzuki beans and measure out part of the can then store the rest. no problem for a normal person. for me? production. i have to wash the strainer first because i made chicken last night and the sink area is therefore contaminated, in my mind. wash the strainer, fend off the cat some more because CAN OPENER OMG even though we have never fed him anything that comes of using a can opener and what the hell kind of cat likes beans anyway? i manage to get the beans rinsed, label a little zipper plastic bag, measure what i need, store the rest, and decide not to fight the cat licking the strainer clean. who knew? cat likes adzuki beans. add the whole apple and a couple of (rinsed! go me!) leaves of kale and the ice to the blender. try blending. blending fail. try the tamper. still the apple appears to be whole, but i am stubborn. i let it rest while i attend to the quinoa. measure into a smaller pot to mix with the apple and other ingredients. more fending off of cat. let the smaller pot do its thing and try more blending. i use some long tongs to feel around for the apple and decide that i'm not ready to pull the apple out to chop it quite yet. more blending, more success. more tamping. then i put my trust in the vitamix and blast it on high. high scares me. high makes me think that the motor will burst into flames and i will be found in a crackling pile of fruit and greens being licked clean by a little jerk cat.

i might have a phobia about electrical fires. i come by it honestly. don't judge.

anyway, i finally manage success with both quinoa and smoothie, put all the extras and leftovers away, pile the sink high with tools and dishes, decant the smoothies into grownup sippy cups because i am incapable of not spilling, and schlep it all upstairs. before taking any photos while anything is still out and pretty. i need to remember to bring my iphone to the kitchen more often.

so the green smoothie

is quite bright and tasty, and the quinoa is yummy, too. and really it didn't take THAT long to do all that, and i now have breakfast quinoa for at least another day, probably two, plus smoothie snacks for the rest of today.

i haz a proud. 

so far, so good.

i went grocery shopping with leah last week. pro tip: supplements are expensive. right now and until the cleanse (which starts *this* thursday) ends, i'm avoiding soy, dairy, corn, gluten, eggs, and peanuts. cooking with coconut or olive oil. the food is good, but man is it a challenge to shop (or choose from a restaurant menu--so far, no success on that one).

yesterday was the best day so far. no migraine and minimal gastrointestinal discomfort or other symptoms. i would love to have days like that more often. actually, i haven't had GI symptoms for a few days, or at least none keeping me in bed or anything. the migraines are still every day, except yesterday so far. but this process isn't aimed at solving the migraine problem, so that's okay. they just keep me from really fully enjoying days on which my GI symptoms are gone or minimal.

so thursday leah will come over for a few hours to help me cook, show me some recipes, and teach me how to use my new pressure cooker. it's very nice to have someone ready to answer questions, and she's very positive. she's also very understanding and patient. it all gives me hope.