What a beautiful day for a wedding.  The bride was stunning, there was loving family and friends, fondly remembered dearly departed and lots of good touchy feeling warm fuzzy stuff all round. A lovely day had by all.

It also included a very drunk grumpy, then not so grumpy Dutchman. A meal (for me) that consisted of green beans and chicken (I knew there wouldn’t be anything GF so I pre-loaded – don’t worry about me ha ha), and 3 litres of bottled water.

I am home now on the couch with two very grateful fur-children, I left the GD there – there was no removing him – he has been looking forward to this event for years. He started getting excited about Wednesday last week; getting tense and manically obnoxiously happy and working on his playlist. I came home from getting my hair did this morning (nothing fancy just getting rid of me grey) to find him already drinking on the back deck at 10:30am. He just got more excited (drunk) from then on really. At one point I sent him for a walk to settle down – it worked – he came back and gave a really lovely speech and got all teary the big sop.

When I left him he was declaring his undying love for me, in between asking if I was mad, and I was getting increasingly mad with him because he wouldn’t get out of the car and let me go home to sleep! Waaaaaaay past my sober bedtime.

I wonder what time he’ll get home tonight? I won’t notice – I am off to bed now!

Friday thank goodness. And, unusually, I have a life. Friends of mine have a band, The Blue Roses, and I went to watch them play at the Thirsty. Late night for me! And tomorrow the wedding! Excitement. I will be a zombie on Monday.

A little bird told my friend that I used to do a bit of informal gig photography, and that I was pretty good, and so she hinted that I might like to shoot her gig because she’d feel comfy with me taking photos. So I grabbed a DSLR camera from work and took it along to see what I could do with it.

I have to say I didn’t like it. I used to shoot film on a little instamatic camera, with a flash. Also I was wasted a lot. This meant that the photos were always a pretty even split combination of skill and luck AND I had the balls to get right up in the face of the people I wanted to shoot and didn’t care if I blinded them with the flash (which I did a lot because I liked the effect). I wasn’t ever all about shooting the band – more the crowd – and I was way too aware of myself tonight. I took a couple of good photos but I gave up pretty early on. I think I need to dig out my little instamatic camera and some rolls of film. And find my metaphoric balls.

It made a decision for me though – I am not taking the camera to the wedding tomorrow because;

1. I don’t want to be taking photos I want to be enjoying the day.
2. They will have a professional photographer with mega gear and talent on site.
3. the digi won’t fit in my gold brocade clutch so that settles that!

Fuck me it’s midnight and I have to get up for BC tomorrow – I’m out!

Peace.

I have spent the better part of the evening lying in bed feeling achey, body aches, head aches, hungry but not – you know the drill. The grumpy Dutchman has spent the better part of the evening feeding the kids, trying and failing to keep the lads away from me (Mum why are you lying down? Mum can I cuddle you? Mum why don’t you like me lying on you? Mum what’s this? CRASH). He cooked me a dinner because they were having pizza, and all the while sorting out his records for the upcoming wedding this weekend. It turns out he will be off DJing while I am the only sober one at the wedding too – yay.

I ate a lot of raw food today – we were on a class trip to the Galleries and I didn’t want to carry a lunchbox all over town – so we got Mexican at my suggestion. So far so good. No sore tummy from the raw food. Although, actually, while I think about it – I didn’t ask what the chicken was cooked in, and the body aches kicked in about an hour later. Damnit. It was probably coated in flour before cooking. It was delicious but I should have checked. Fuck it.

There you have it! I knew this blog would be good for me – working stuff out while I write it. Must try harder – I am usually too careful to gluten myself.

But – in a sort of not way – it’s good that I haven’t got a bug because we are going to this wedding on Saturday and I wanna wear my Miss Crabb dress ha ha

  

Today I woke up with a hangover. Which I consider HIGHLY unfair considering I haven’t had a drink in 53 days. Hen’s night soda water hangover? yeah right. More like just nana-pants-not-coping with her late night. Or maybe I had an allergic reaction to the stripper; Did you know that the grumpy Dutchman used to be allergic to strippers? It’s true. He had to leave his own stag do lap dance to go and throw up, and he used to either be violently ill or fall asleep almost immediately at the mention of them. You’ll be reassured to know that, through a series of small exposures, gradually building up his immunity, and with the support of some very close friends, he is now back to ‘normal’ and can tolerate strippers with the same drunken enthusiasm as the rest of the lads. Phew! Could have been worse.

Anywaaaaay, I woke up with a hangover and was super grumpy about it, because that sucks, so I piled the lads in the car and we headed up the hill for a visit to the grandies. I left the GD at home to clean because A. He is bad at tolerating road trips with two (fighting) lads B. he has more enthusiasm for vacuuming and C. duh cleaning sucks.

Before I left, feeling exceptionally pious in my alcohol free state, I sucked back a green smoothie that I made up (just combined all the good bits I know). It was delicious and filling, here is the recipe;

• 1 cup coconut water (no added sugar stuff)
• 1 cup almond milk
• half an avocado
• 1 frozen banana chopped
• a great big handful of greens – kale/spinach/rocket whateves bro
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla powder
• one tablespoon of coconut oil
• 1 tblsp of protein powder – I have done it with and without – when I added it I wasn’t hungry again until lunchtime – without it I needed to eat again after a couple of hours…. up to you – I have mixed feelings about protein powder as I have said before…

Blitz it and pour – this will give you more than one full glass but not enough for two full glasses. I give the half leftover to whomever is nagging the loudest and they all seem to like it!

We visited my grandies, then I took the lads to see my Mum and stepdad. They live on a big property where Mum has an enormous garden full of fruit and veg and they have chooks and get ‘happy eggs’ in exchange for giving them food and (quite luxurious by chicken standards) lodgings – Chooketeria‘s and all.

The boys love visiting, equally because Mum has an iPad which they can play on AND they get to feed the chooks and collect the eggs, and search for frogs in the ponds and harvest various veges from the garden that they will refuse to eat later. Today we got a big pile of veg from mum to bring home – half to give away – and the rest for us to eat.

It is interesting, when I explain to folks what I am not eating – they always ask the same thing ‘well, what CAN you eat?’ as in what the hell is left? And I always answer the same thing. Meat, eggs, most veges and bits and pieces here and there. There is actually a lot left. Especially when you add in rice, quinoa, some fruit, nut butters, veges purees etc. And I explain, that even before I was diagnosed, the GD and I pretty much did from scratch in our cooking so it wasn’t a biggie.

Part of the reason people who go GF gain weight is because the GF alternatives to ‘normal’ food are loaded up with sugar and salt to mask the lack of delicious gluten. Hence me avoiding them as much as I can. Mostly they don’t taste as good as the real thing anyway so I’d rather not bother to be honest. You are much better off just eliminating the stuff with the gluten altogether, don’t look for replacements, but explore all the other food there is left. Most people only have a few recipes they cook, a few food sources they go to and a routine bunch of ingredients they use. We were like that too – we cooked from fresh, but we used the stuff we knew. And I was a pretty conservative eater – I only tried butter chicken in my early twenties! ha ha. But now I’m up for anything. Really. Because I never know when I might be un-locking a whole new ingredient to be using in my limited diet – I can’t pass it up. I love food and most days I feel pretty satisfied. (Of course I have days when I could murder the family for eating ginger kisses in front of me but I find that ranting unintelligibly at them and then sulking for a while works just fine to help the feelings pass).

And, I really like that the lads get to see where their food comes from. They have made the connection now between the chickens that they have held and fed and the chicken they eat for dinner. They collect the eggs and they pick the courgettes and tomatoes etc themselves. They haven’t had much face to face contact with bigger cattles beasts but they ‘get’ that the cute pig and piglets at the easter show will one day be bacon, and they know where beef and milk comes from. And they can make their own decisions about eating them. We try to have the discussions.

So today’s ‘food from scratch’. My friend Joe was here on his last day before heading back to Korea, and he had a real hangover so I made homemade chips out of kumara, carrots and potatoes (with a hint of paprika thanks Alissa for the tip) and they were delicious! Hit all the spots. I made dinner with the GIANT yellow marrow we got from mum today, stuffed with mince and a quinoa/rice mix – it was also delicious although I am the only one who ate the marrow because the boys suck. It was soft and tender and not at all weird. True.

   

And now I just have to get my gear ready for boot camp tomorrow morning before I finally give in to the nagging and watch the first episode of Breaking Bad with the grumpy Dutchman – I know it’s weird that I haven’t watched any of it yet but it has always been on too late for me! I know.

Hen’s nights. I have only been to three in my life and it appears that there is only one male stripper in Auckland because he was at two of them. (My sister’s Hen’s was a very civilised affair in Hanmer springs and there was no stripper).

Our lovely friends are getting married next weekend and tonight was the Hen’s party (hence my super late post!), I have been half dreading it all week.

Because no booze. And what is the point of a Hen’s if not to get right royally off your tits, play silly games and travel in a big drunk giggling mass through town? I am a bit inexperienced I admit; I didn’t have a Hens of my own – I was a little tiny bit pregnant when I got married so it would have been a very ‘dry’ occasion… But I digress.

The reason I have been dreading it is because I don’t want to be a wet blanket. The lovely, and very organised bridesmaids had done a great job, with a ‘mixologist’ on hand and all sorts of delicious looking food. I drank soda water and lime all night – much to the amusement of the mixologist. I couldn’t eat the food and I knew that was going to happen so I had pre-loaded before I came out. And tried really hard not to yawn (cos’ late night) or be boring or not as excited as the rest of the bunch. And I went to the bathroom a lot.

I have to say, it’s really weird watching a stripper sober. We assembled and he duly arrived and did his ‘sexy’ entrance dance. He strutted around, gesticulating toward his ‘special area’ and manoeuvred both the bride-to-be and the bridesmaid into awkward and intimate clinches all for the amusement of the rest of us. I spent most of the time cowering behind both my friends and the pot plant on the deck desperately trying to avoid being dragged in to the ‘fun’. Seriously – my dress is silk and I will CUT you if you get whipped cream or body oil on it. Don’t test me man.

But it got us talking. What is sexy? Channing Tatum is sexy. That bit on a man’s body where his hips go down in a ‘v’ is sexy. I’ve also got a bit of a westie fetish for a man wearing nothing but black jeans – bare chest and feet. The GD has been known to ‘casually’ wander through the house dressed in such a manner just to see me catch my breath and forget my train of thought. We agreed that our experience of male strippers wasn’t sexy. And considering that this one advertised himself as ‘NZ’s hottest male stripper’ things weren’t looking good for the rest of them.

Anyway, it’s late now – the Hen has headed in to town with her best bitches to find a bar to dance the night away. I am starving but well hydrated and it is past midnight. Bedtime for me!