Aside From Wanting to Give Marie Antionette a Swift Kick In the Shin, I'm Getting Hotter By the Day

The Palinode and I have decided to go off bread. Or, at least, I think we decided to go off bread, but I've caught him stuffing a New York Fries hot dog wrapped in a white bread bun into his face at movie theatres twice in the last week, so I guess that I decided to quit eating bread, and he decided to quit eating bread when it isn't wrapped around reconstituted cow mulch that's been shovelled off the abbatoir floor.

That reconstituted cow mulch is oh so tasty, but I managed to stave off the temptation by taking the large-theatre-popcorn-with-extra-butter route. Because I'm thinking about my health.

Aside from the evils of theatre food, though, we have been taking care to stay away from the major wheat gluten foods, because our middles were doing this slow, middle-aged expansion thing that does not bring all the boys to the yard, and I have a strong streak of celiac disease running through my family. It only seemed to make sense to head future health problems off at the pass while also getting hotter as I edge closer to forty. Everybody wins!

What I didn't take into account is the incredible addiction I have to bread, bread-wrapped foods, muffins, bagels, cake, and every other fabulous thing baked with wheat flour. CAKE, people. I do not make my own cakes. Where, oh where, can I find delectable yet gluten-free cakes?!

I didn't even really eat that much cake before this whole gluten-light diet started, but damn do I want it now that I can't have it.

Remember that Sparklecorn unicorn cake?



Good times.

Anyway, so we're trying the bread-free, if not completely gluten-free, way of living, and so far so good. I can tell that I've lost a few pounds in just the first week-and-a-half, and my gut looks less jiggly and more firm. I'm not heading for a six-pack any time soon, but getting rid of the frowny face that the fold mark above my protruding stomach makes in conjunction with my nipples when I sit down would be good, and I'm already on my way.



I apologize for making you think about my nipples, but it was necessary to illustrate a very important point. My torso looks like a sad fat kid whose mother drank during pregnancy.

And completely aside from that awesome visual I just left you with, SCHMUTZIE.COM IS SEVEN YEARS OLD TODAY. That's hella ancient.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand... scene.

S/he: Stuck

Three days before my fourteenth birthday, one day after Christmas, I felt shifty. My belly, both full and hungry, had me eating through the bowl of mixed nuts on the coffee table, crushing shells with the cheap, metal nutcracker whose weak joint made its jaws scissor along the walnut shells. The peanuts were stale. The licorice in the neighbouring bowl was the black kind with the salt taste of blood. The whole thing made me angry. They couldn't even get the nuts right.

The family was out visiting relatives. We were related to what seemed like half of that hamlet of 150 people, and I was tired of being told how much I had grown, that I was becoming such a young lady. Each exclamation over my accidental body made me invisible. The weight in my abdomen was confusing. I wondered if I had cancer. I searched my grandparents' satellite channels for porn.

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S/he: In The Beginning

At four and five years old, I liked to imagine myself all grown up. In my mind, I pictured my grown up self as a paper doll. I put on a suit and a hat and added a briefcase. My shoes were shiny and wing-tipped. I had sharp creases ironed down the front of my pants. I had a strong but not overbearing chest, and there would be a wife, I was sure. She stood next to me in a dress. I had a man's name, which I thought might be Bob. I was going to be a businessman or a singer on television. There might be a son.

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