Change is afoot! (Food Allergy Testing…)

I’m not someone who freaks out at the notion of change.  After a little grumbling I usually arrive at wherever the unexpected diversion takes me with a annoying genuine enthusiasm.  We’ve had some changes around The Schell Cafe.  Nothing of any significance, really.  Just enough to shake up the routine I was happily clipping along in.

First, I went screenless for Lent. Yep, I signed off Facebook and Twitter for forty days and forty nights.  I have not looked at a news feed, blog or the Internet in over a week.  I’ve included television (remember that archaic form of entertainment?) in my screenless fast too.  I am checking email about once a week (ok, twice) and I decided to keep posting here at The Cafe on a semi-regular basis.

Why the screen fast? I was becoming a slave to my iphone and computer screen.  Checking emails and texts at red lights.  Reading blogs on my iphone at the library while the Littles did their homework.  Dreaming about status updates on Facebook and Twitter.  I was on the Too Much Information Highway and I decided to take the next available exit.  Lent provided me with a perfect opportunity.

Second, Littlest Middlest is in the third week of testing for various food allergies.  We’ve run every test in the book from parasites to Celiac and are now in the midst of an allergy elimination trial.  She’s holding up like a champ, but these tests are not fun and involve strict elimination diets for 25 hour periods, several times per week.  The worst so far has been eliminating calcium! Did you know that calcium is in almost everything?  Oh, except corn, white rice and red meat.  Try offering those choices to a newly six year old child for a week and see how quickly you reach for the bottle of red at 4:59 pm?!?!

Luckily we are narrowing down the culprit(s) and are highly suspicious of dairy, most likely cheese as the food allergy offenders.  Needless to say, dinner options haven’t been entirely in my control and many of them hardly blog worthy.

Third, I tore my Plantar Fascia.  The fascia is a thick tendon on the bottom of your foot.  It is attached to the heel and fans forward toward the toes.  If you tear your fascia, you will know.  It hurts.  Really hurts.  Hurts.  And, if you are hardheaded and proceed to run and train on your ailing foot until you are forced to call an orthopedic surgeon, well then you are very naughty and deserve the punishment you are given.  My punishment? I was forced to purchase a pair of orthotic shoes that even my great grandmother wouldn’t have worn.  I seriously had to choke back the tears when the podiatrist appeared from behind the velvet shoe curtain bearing my new shoes.  And since I had to sell a Little (I’ll never tell which one!) to pay for these horrid shoes the loathing is deep.  Insult was added to my injury when my doctor told me swimming was the only form of exercise I was allowed to do for the next eight weeks.  But. Wait. I donnwanna…

I grumbled for one day. Then I swallowed my pride.  I put on the damned million-dollar-clodhoppers and, of course, they feel divine on my feet.  I’ve taken up swimming.  And, shhh….don’t tell myself, but I’m actually enjoying it.  After the first three days of wearing my silicon cap sideways someone at the pool kindly told me the swoosh goes to the front.  Swimmers are so nice.  I’m re-learning to swim, focusing more on the glide, less on the speed.  And, I’m saying things like I just did ten 200’s.  Truthfully, I don’t even know what that means, but it winded the hell out of me.

If you made it all the way to the end of this post God bless you.  And thank you.  I’ll be back soon with tasty recipes.