12 Step for Writing?

So, hello. Yes, it's me. I need to slow down on these annual posts, don't you think? Ugh! "THEY" say writers are the worst about actually writing. I guess that makes me a TERRIFIC writer. But, I'm gonna try it again. Another gluten-free compadre on Twitter and Pinterest (@GFDougie) has lectured (I'm sure he'd say ENCOURAGED) me to do more tweeting on my gluten-free Twitter account and sharing. So, since this is the stereotypical day to start anything, I'm giving it another go. If you choose, and are on Twitter, I'm at @MilliNoVilli. I just changed it to that. I have to write it down here and there so I can find it later. Because I KNOW I'll forget it. I was quite tickled at coming up with that but it's way too kitchy for me to remember. Cool, I'm not.

Just a word of warning, I'm not one of those fancy cooks. I love cooking shows on tv, food magazines, cookbooks, cooking blogs, etc. But my own experience has no culinary schooling or even real medical expertise. I can only share what I've learned, what I like and what's going on in my own daily life. And it's not centered around my cooking or blogging. At least, not yet. If you stick with me you'll learn I'm midwestern, simple, cheap and very un-politically correct. You won't read long, lengthy, scientific rants about non-GMO foods, how eating non-organics is appalling or the scourge of red meats, sugar and butter. I grew up eating much like Ree Drummond's "Pioneer Woman" and Paula Deen...without quite so much butter. But, yes, VERY southern roots.

I didn't grow up battling gluten-intolerance or food allergies. I've been told I had some issues when I was an infant but I grew out of them pretty quickly. Fast-forward 47 or 48 yrs and I suddenly had digestive and other problems and couldn't find out why. I'm not one to go to the doctor much and after only about three different doctors not having much clue, I started researching for myself online. I concluded I needed to write down what I was eating and how I felt afterwards and when I experienced problems and what kind of problems they were. I think writing it down was key to finally seeing a pattern emerge. My body seems to take 1 1/2-2 days to fully react, making it a little more difficult to see. I started making a list of foods I seemed to be bothered by and one-by-one would take them out of my diet. With every food I eliminated the degree of being bothered would lessen. I ended up with a list of 6 foods: glutens, dairy, eggs, beans, rice, nuts. And when you consider our usual diets, eating became quite challenging. I learned that my gluten-intolerance was caused my the gluten killing off the villi in our intestines and that probiotics helps keep those healthy and active. Since I couldn't do dairy, yogurt was out. But I found an allergy-free supplement and took double doses for a few weeks to heal my "leaky gut". Once it was healed, I could get to work at improving my diet. In time, one by one, I managed to work some of those foods back into my diet. At least now and then. A little bit. Which REALLY does help when in social settings. And if I CHOOSE. I still have issues with more than just a little rice, nuts and beans. Glutens are still my worst and I really try to stay away from them as much as possible. I stumbled onto some help with dairy after visiting an uncle, who had become lactose-intolerant also. He could have lactose-free milk and said if he had some of it daily, it helped him digest a little bit of cheese or ice cream on occasion. REALLY? You know as soon as I got home I was zooming to the store for lactose-free milk! And I could also tolerate it well! YAY! So just being able to cook with a milk that tasted like milk and cooks well was SO helpful. And I also found I could do the cheeses and ice creams too. A little. Occasionally. And soft cheeses do much better than cheddar. Go figure. I have no idea why.

SO. That's a little about my journey so far. I'm sure I'll fill in some blanks now and then in the future. I will probably also repeat myself. I'm sorry about that. I seem to have come to that point in my life where I do that. I'll try to keep it at a minimum. Blessings.

Wow, long time no write

I have no idea why I haven't written in so long. The only explanation is life. Life and moods. Have I ever mentioned I'm just FULL of moods? I'll give you a rundown of life around here. And a few thoughts. Maybe this will be the "choke" to getting the engine going again. Don't know what a choke is? Then I'm MUCH older than you.

I made my bi-annual trip to Kansas to visit my mother. With every visit, I am reminded each and every time that I would be a raving maniac if I lived closer and that living 1000 miles away is almost as frustrating. And its the only time I feel very cursed for being an only child. Continued hoarding and her complete belief and insistance that keeping ALL her "pretty" stuff is completely normal although she isn't very capable. And her insistance on driving is just things nightmares are made.

The holidays were spent in relative quietness. Enjoyed lots of family time with my hubby, son and dog.

The normalcy returned at turn of the new year. My son began his monthly treks to his drum corp weekend camps to ready for the new season. He is their field director this year, which will be his last, as he "ages out" this year. His mother gains several more gray hair as he drives the approximate 240 roundtrip miles in Michigan winter weather. February brought a home accident for my husband, costing him 3 broken fingers needing surgery. One required pins and one required the amputation of the top joint. The blessing was that it wasn't worse and it was his left hand. He's right handed. But God has blessed his recovery and he is on the downhill side albeit the physical therapy.

We have been reading and internalizing some great articles and blogs on minimalism. We have reached a stage in life we are very tired of all the years of accumlumating stuff and moving this stuff for the many cross-country moves we've made through the years. We've moved many a box full from house-to-house, state-to-state without opening once in many, many years. After realizing what hanging onto STUFF has done to both of our parents, we decided we desired to do differently. We don't want to wait till we are too old to do something about it. We want the freedom. And most of all, we don't want to do to our son what we will have to deal with our parents' belongings. So we have slowly been going through things and making periodic trips to our local Salvation Army. Its really exciting to think that someone will actually use stuff we have long forgotten about or no longer use.

Even though I haven't been writing on my blog lately, I have been considering possible new directions for it. Perhaps less random. Even though I enjoy discussing whatever is on my mind, I'm considering advice to be more "thematic". Do you have any thoughts on that? I would love to hear from you.

Not completely blank...

Well, I realized a lot of time has passed since my last post. I've hit another one of those times when nothing has inspired me to write. But I want to write and I read the other day that doing it is simply a decision to do it. So, here I am. No issue to stand on my soapbox about. Nothing terribly inspiring or thought-provoking to say. So, this is simply ramblings in my head lately.

I have one large thing going on in my head and stressing me greatly. But every time I try to voice or write about it, it gets so big and convoluted that I cannot possibly put it "out there". It turns into one HUGE whine. I try to leave it in God's hands. I know it can only work out because of Him. But there's a small part of me, a very human part, that thinks this one thing can even override Him. IT is a very intimidating thing. One that has left it's damaged marks on me from childhood. See? And even trying to talk AROUND it, it's getting bigger to talk around. So, that's enough of that.

My father died almost a year ago. I miss him. A lot. But I am so thankful he's no longer in pain and I picture him up in heaven all the time. I'm sure he's been getting all the facilities up there up to code and then some. He was a very precise person.

My baby is turning 20 soon. It's amazing how sometimes it seemed like he was never going to get out of stages or ages. In their moments, some of them seemed endless. But looking back, it seems to have all flown by. I made SO many mistakes. You often say you won't do the same things your parents did, but it was amazing how many times I heard my mother come out of my mouth. I KNOW I prayed so much that what mistakes I did make didn't permanently damage his heart and soul. He's such a fabulous young man, in spite of me. I'm very proud of him and anxious to see what God has planned for his life.

Well, that's just a sampling of some of the ramblings in my head lately. I wrote. For better or worse.

New Year, Now What?

Here we all are in 2010. Do you recall being a kid and thinking the 2000's sounded so Sci-fi? It's just so amazing how quickly time passes. I learned a lot last year doing my blog. I actually got where I was writing more and enjoying it more. Then comes the holidays. SCREEEECCCCHHH!!!! That's the sound of brakes, in case you didn't know. My husband took quite a bit of time off, my son was between semesters and we simply did a lot of nothing. Relaxing, watching TV--mostly football games, and going to bed and getting up and eating whenever the spirit moved. It was so enjoyable. But, alas, bills need to be paid and jobs and schooling need returning to.

I realized that it's been awhile since my last entry and started thinking about what to write about. I think my brain is still on vacation. Apparently, I'm needing to get back into some sort of swing of writing. I have a few aspirations for my writing this new year. I'd like to finish the fiction novel I began during NaNoWriMo in November. I entered in the nth hour, so I hadn't really prepared for it very well and I wasn't convinced it was something I could do. I didn't finish the goal of 50,000 words, but I did enjoy my story and would like to continue with it. I have considered a new blog also. One that is thematic. I gave this quite a bit of thought and concluded that perhaps it will be a blog about encouragement. My husband and I have been told many times that we are Barnabases, encouragers. And in this day, who doesn't need encouragement from time to time? We all do. What do you think?

For better or worse, we are already almost halfway through January of this new year. Yikes! I want this year to be more purposeful. I'm tired of kind of "floating" along wherever life takes me and not really accomplishing anything or bettering myself at all. I have a couple of other goals for myself in addition to my writing. I'm sure you may hear about that in the future. I didn't make "resolutions", just resolving to be more purposeful. It's a phychological thing for me. Maybe I'll stick to this one. It would really help me to hear from you, the readers. What do want to see in 2010 for yourself? Speak up and let's help each other make this year the best we've had in a long time.

May be M.I.A. for a bit

I've had quite a writing streak lately and have been trying to think of a new subject to blog about. I've gotten where I quite enjoy the process. A friend recently shared with me about NaNoWriMo. Are you blinking and wondering about that like I was when she first mentioned it? Well, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and it's an organization that encourages writers, and those that want to be writers, to simply write more. They picked November as a month to encourage all those that love putting together words to completely purge themselves from Nov. 1- Nov. 31. The goal is to write a novel, fiction, consisting of 50,000 words in that one month time. They encourage those to not use previous story lines or partial stories already in the works. It must be from the start of the process to the very end in the month of November.

If you sign up with the organization, you make it more official and it becomes more of a psychological commitment to finish. The website said last year 120,000 signed up and 20,000 completed their 50,000 words. The goal is not an award-winning book. It is simply to put down 50,000 words. It seems that most writers tend to be perfectionists and in our desire for our stories to be good, we tend to obsess on words, grammar, structure, plot, etc., to the point that many never actually finish their stories. Getting past those insipid writing blocks is also a universal issue. So NaNoWriMo encourages that we are not to worry about whether the story is living up to our expectations or think it's good. Even bad, 50,000 words is an accomplishment.

Now, when I heard about NaNoWriMo, I was impressed, but didn't consider doing it myself as I don't write fiction. I have never had much luck at coming up with sustaining plot ideas. I took Journalism all through high school and was the editor in my senior year, so true, fact-filled stories are much more comfortable and easy for me. I even struggled in my college creative writing class. I simply wasn't wordy enough. But yesterday, three days before NaNoWriMo begins, my friend talked enough to have me wondering if this is something I could really do. I decided I would give it a whirl but do it more on my own, and not to expect a 50,000 goal but perhaps 30,000. I could be happy with that. Then I would plan to do it up right next year. But, my friend, being my friend, is pushy. Very, very pushy. So this morning I made if official. Signed up and everything. I still don't know if I have a story in me. And if I do happen to find one, can I stretch it to novel length? I guess we'll all find out. So, if you don't see me during November, you'll know I'm not hanging up my "pen", so to speak. In fact, I really can't imagine not blogging anymore. Surely I'll have something to talk about. And I may need the distraction to get my head out of the great story that I'm obsessing about. Maybe I'll just give everyone an update of how I'm doing, how it's going. Wish me luck, cross your fingers, say a prayer, whatever you feel led to send my way. I'll appreciate it all.

My first blog

Greetings!

I guess I should tell you a bit about myself to start this blog thing off. After all, this is all about my thoughts and opinions on everyday stuff. I said this is about the “middles”. My life started and has been lived there.

Looking back, I realize that understanding of the world around me came slowly to me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my people skills and knowledge of the things going on around me was a slow, melting evolution. I’m not saying I have arrived at complete enlightenment, but as the old song goes, “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.” But even that is only on certain days. A lack of sun where I live plays a big part in that somehow.

Friends are priceless to me. The ones that love me regardless of a difference in opinion and can handle that I’m discovering the real me at the age of----well, lets just say at my age----and can still accept me are my closest. I’m not about collecting friends. I abhor shallow, surface relationships and I have found I have a voice. Those friends have encouraged me to let more people see my writings and ramblings. So, to prove that age hasn’t completely claimed me yet, this is my “stepping out”. And I’ll leave it at that for now.