When you host a yard sale, you sometimes get to meet some interesting people and get asked all sorts of questions. This past weekend’s yard sale wasn’t as busy or successful as the one we held on Memorial Day weekend, but that’s to be expected on Father’s Day weekend. Lots of window shoppers and tire kickers and bratty, out-of-control children whose parents weren’t too different from them. Several neighbors and yard sale competitors checking out the goods, often impressed by our price stickers and quality items. Although, many of the “best” items are now gone.
Some of the questions we received this weekend:
Q. Is the deer for sale? (in backyard)
A. Polite laugh
Thoughts: Have you asked it?
Q. (Little girl, about 6-years-old) “Can I keep that?” Pointing to the Wii drum set.
A. You’ll have to ask your daddy about that.
Thoughts: I can’t imagine asking something so inappropriate when I was a kid.
Q. Are you guys brother and sister or something? Referring to Dustin and me, asked by a 20-something guy.
A. No, we’re married!
Thoughts: F*$%! Do we look alike?
Jenn’s thoughts: At least he didn’t ask if I’m his mother or daughter.
Dustin’s thoughts: “We should have told him yes and then started kissing” ROFL! EWW! Sicko.
Q. Do you know if there are any other yard sales around here?
A. I’m not sure.
Thoughts: You don’t like our stuff and want us to guide you to better stuff… nice.
Q. How do you get to ______ ?
A. We either explained or honestly didn’t know.
Thoughts: Do we look like Google maps? Oh, wait! No. Of course not. We obviously look like brother and sister, duh. Silly me.
Q. What’s a Tivo? (We’re selling a brand new, never used one that a company sent me when they first came out years ago.)
A. It digitally records TV shows, like a VCR.
Thoughts: Yay! I’m not the only person on earth that still remembers what a VCR is!!
Q. How much for the ladder?
A. It’s not for sale.
Thoughts: There’s a sign on it that reads: LADDER NOT FOR SALE!
Q. Any Webkins?
A. No, sorry.
Thoughts: What the hell is a Webkin?! After a Google search I see that it’s actually Webkinz, and I’m still not sure what they are. Some kind of animal toy thingie. *shrugs*
Q. Where did you get all of your stuff from?
A. *confused by question* All… over. Different stores, gifts, etc.
Thoughts: W. T. F. ! Do you REALLY think we went to one store and bought a lifetime worth of stuff? Wait… maybe they think we bought everything wholesale just to sell it in our yard? Or maybe they think we stole it and wanted to know the store/house we hit up?
Q. Why are you making your mother mow the lawn? Asked to Dustin, I was inside at the time.
A. Uh, I didn’t ask her to, she likes to do it. (She really does, true story. She’s obsessed with vacuums and lawn mowers.) We have a gas one, I don’t know why she’s using the manual one. (She was getting a spot that had too many rocks around it for the gas mower.)
Their response: Gas is bad for the environment!!!!!
Thoughts: They think Dustin’s a lazy slave-driving, gas-guzzling misogynist, LOL.
After a long, weekend of this, we ended Sunday night with a filet mignon feast courtesy of mom. She bought an entire grass-fed beef tenderloin and had the butcher cut it into thick steaks. It was amazing. She grilled it perfectly!
At this point, I had been fasting for close to 18 hours because my stomach has been SO upset, intermittent fasting made it feel better. No food = less pain. So, I broke my fast by eating the string bean and red onion salad right out of the serving bowl before we went to the table. Holy burning sensation, Batman!!! My stomach started to burn almost instantly. But I was hungry, so I ignored it.
The mashed potatoes were made with goat’s milk, but she did use regular butter. So I had a small amount of regular butter for the first time in 14 days, other than ghee which is casein- and lactose-free.
Did I mention the steak was amazing? It was. Medium-well and seasoned with just salt + pepper.
Starved at that point, I needed some more volume. Enter my trusty side salad. Just a romaine mix with EVOO + balsamic + sea salt + black pepper + garlic powder.
The string bean salad was so yummy. I love it chilled tossed in EVOO + red wine vinegar. It’s a divine combo.
Delicious. But, unfortunately, I had one of the worst night’s in a long time after this meal. We tried to go to sleep around 11:30pm, but I ended up staying up until 2:30am because I was so sick to my stomach. It was one of the worst episodes—as I like to refer to them—that I have had in months. No one else was sick, so I knew it was just my usual symptoms flaring up. I honestly do not believe the small amount of real butter would send me into that kind of reaction as I typically ate butter on a near daily basis prior to avoiding it; I think the burning sensation I experienced seconds after eating the string beans—my first food of the day—was something to pay attention to and mention to my health advisors.
I felt like hell, worse than ever. Obviously there’s either something I added or didn’t take away yet that’s the problem, or it’s not food-related. Monday, I woke up feeling completely drained. So tired and listless. To my dismay, Aunt Flo had arrived—6 DAYS early! My face was beet red on my right cheek with a burning sensation and aches and pains traveled through my body. Two weeks without gluten and cow milk should have made me feel a little better I would think, but not worse. The only things I changed were my bread and pasta, but even those things were made of foods I typically eat anyway: Rice, eggs, GF oats, potato starch, xanthan gum, quinoa, etc. Not one new ingredient, everything I eat on and off on my regular menu. And I kept goat’s and sheep’s milk products to one serving or LESS per day, some days none at all. However, I did increase my bean and meat consumption. I know the beans were definitely troublesome, but it seems like beef might also be problematic as I recall having a similar reaction two or three times after having beef. Then again, it seems like everything–especially fibrous food–is problematic. I feel best when I’m in the midst of a fast. As soon as I eat, even a string bean, the symptoms resume. Frustrating. Transition phase from going gluten-free? I don’t know. You can kick a heroin habit in less time than that, no? lol
After the horrible episodes two nights in a row, I decided to just call an end to this gluten and cow milk avoidance/reduction diet. As of right now, it hasn’t helped, and I don’t know if it’s coincidental or what’s going on, but I do know that I shouldn’t be getting worse. I know I’m not getting worse because of loss of gluten, there is no physical need for it. And that’s why I believe it’s not gluten or not JUST gluten/dairy. I gave it two weeks and if I saw any improvements or at least didn’t feel like total crap, I would have stayed the course for the full 4 weeks. Right now, I’m just longing to return to “normal.” And by normal I mean the days of being not quite as bad as the past 2 weeks have been. Even that is better than being in agony all night long. I have a follow-up post on this coming tomorrow. I just wanted to tell everyone that I’m back on the sauce, lol.
For now!
I cannot believe it’s later Tuesday afternoon. I feel like it’s Saturday still! So much work to do, so far behind on everything. Gah! Time to go play catch-up.
{ 9 comments }
Twitter: spabettie
June 21, 2011 at 5:52 PM
oh, my! people ask funny questions. this was a hilarious post!! (NO, you don’t look like brother + sister!!)
sorry that dinner made you hurty
Twitter: avericooks
June 21, 2011 at 6:18 PM
Oh girl I am so sorry for all these symptoms and you made the right call, 100%. Anything that is having THIS effect is not worth continuing and if one day you decide to tinker around with it, you know what you may be in for, you can seek the help of a naturopath, and can do it in a more controlled way b.c right now it’s the downward spiral of symptom hell and you dont need it!! Good call on bailing.
AF arriving early..common in the detoxing mode. Which is what’s going on with you I think. But the detox symptoms are sooo bad for you ugh!
The 2nd pic, the over head meat shot, submit to TS asap. that’s THEIR food, all the way.
Ppl’s questions…omg.
Ppl used to ask if Scott was my father. All the time. When I was 23 and he was 40.
And they ask now if he’s the grandfather not the father of Skylar.
What comes out of ppl’s mouths amazes me!
Awww I’m sorry for how you are feeling. That is not fun at all when you can’t figure out what is exactly causing all these problems. Did you ever go to a food allergist and get tested??
Good call on the detox thing. You might as well eat what you usually ate and with minor problems, then by completely giving it up. It one thing to be uncomfortable but being uncomfortable constantly in your own body has to be very frustrating. I wish you luck and hopefully sooner or later they will find out what the problem is!
Twitter: j3nndotnet
June 23, 2011 at 3:09 PM
Thanks, Fallon. I appreciate you taking the time to say this!
I haven’t been to an allergist, just gastroenterologists and MDs. I’ve heard a lot of allergy testing can be faulty in either direction, but I am not opposed to it. An allergist is on my must-see list.
You should get with an allergist ASAP. This is something I wish I could get done. Complications with health insurance and I don’t want to start something and not have insurance when it runs out once I turn 26.
I’ve had friends with stomach problems and after getting an allergy test done, the changes they made to their diet helped tremendously. Usually it is where they poke needles in your back method?
To keep my tummy tamed I just know what my limits are to certain foods and enjoy them sparingly if they are a huge trigger. The worst is when I eat too much peanut butter, like several days in a row my stomach gets really upset. So thank good for almond butter, sunflower seed butter and cashew butter!
sorry you have felt bad!!! maybe the guy was hitting on you
Twitter: livlifetoo
June 22, 2011 at 9:08 PM
Your steaks are gorgeous!! I’m so sorry that you ended up having a bad night after your meal. It looked so good.
My son became lactose intolerant about a year ago, it came on all of a sudden, but it took about two months of him being sick off and on for us to figure it out. I wish you the best of luck.
Did you consult a dietitian or something like that before you went on a gluten-free diet? Hope you feel better soon!
And, why would they ever think a deer’s for sale too?
Twitter: j3nndotnet
June 23, 2011 at 3:07 PM
No, I haven’t consulted a dietitian about going gluten-free, but I have talked to three different doctors about it, two of which were Celiac specialists. I wasn’t doing a strict elimination diet at this time, I just did this for my own personal experiment, looking for any signs of improvement. I’ve done a lot of research about gluten-free diets over the past 4 years, so I have a solid grasp on it, but know that a strict elimination diet is much more rigid than my little experiment.
I hope they were joking about the deer! But you never know, lol.
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