I'm an English dork. I recently graduated college with a BA in literature, and am starting a Master's program in the fall, also in literature. This leads to me often quoting bizarre selections from books that no one else understands and that I therefore have to explain. For example, two things I said in the above paragraph are quotations. "I contain multitudes" comes from a Walt Whitman poem (I kind of hate Walt Whitman, but it's still a good quote). And "let me count the ways" comes from an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem (who I love, for reasons I'll explain later). Also, a young, single guy recently moved in across the street from my parents' house. When my mother informed me of this, along with a sly wink and elbow-poke, I responded by quoting the beginning of my all-time favorite book, Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife." (see the sidebar to answer a poll about the movie versions of P&P)
Thank God that my best friend, who I'll call MA (like, M.A., not ma), is similarly dork-like in her love of Jane Austen, literature, and the Celtic lands, because otherwise I would be a very lonely person.
Yes, I also love the Celtic lands. The Celtic lands are Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (which is in England, as in Prince of). Scotland is my favorite. I love Scotland with a deep, abiding passion, and if I ever get my butt over there I swear I will kiss the tarmac. MA recently found a singer named Loreena McKennitt, who puts old poems to music. The two of us pretty much jumped up and down and screamed in delight because she did the poem "The Lady of Shallott" (Anne of Green Gables fans, let me hear you scream too!). I have now listened to the song so many times that my CD player is wilting from over-use.
Uber-dork.
I am also a food dork. By this I do not, by any means, want to imply that I am a gourmet chef or anything like that. In fact, I pretty much suck, cooking wise. However, as the name of this blog says, I am gluten-free. If you've never heard of gluten, let me quickly explain. It's a protein in wheat, barley, and rye. I have celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disorder. That basically means that my body attacks itself whenever I eat gluten. In your small intestine, there are all these kind of finger-like things (gross, I know) that wave around and pull all the nutrients from food as it passes through. Gluten makes the finger-things (called villi) squish flat, so that food passes through without ever getting its nutrients pulled out. So basically, I eat, but I don't get any benefit from it. Once thought to be extremely rare, 1 out of 100 people are now estimated to have celiac disease, but most of them don't know it. It can be diagnosed by a blood test or an endoscopy (like a colonoscopy, but down your throat--gross, I know).
So anyway, long story short, I can't eat anything with flour in it, and lots of other things that don't have flour in them but do have things like barley malt or modified wheat starch or whatever.
This means that when I go out to eat or go grocery shopping, I tend to act like Meg Ryan in the movie When Harry Met Sally. This is an analogy a lot of gluten-free people use, because sadly, it's true.
Uber-dork. Thankfully my friends and family don't blush too much when we go out to eat.
I am, however, moving into an apartment for the first time, because of the whole going-to-grad school thing. I'm pretty stoked about this because despite the fact that my kitchen barely has room to turn around in, it's freaking adorable, and I'm hoping to teach myself to cook. I know, I know, a graduate program is a lot of work and a lot of studying and paper writing. But I think that on weekends I'll have enough time to practice cooking. I have been inspired to learn how to cook by one person: Shauna James Ahern, aka the Gluten-Free Girl. Her blog is AMAZING and I am completely addicted to it. Not only are her posts funny and eloquent and mouth-watering, but she creates and posts all kinds of delectable gluten-free recipes. I've tried cooking on my own, trying to adapt regular recipes to be gluten-free, with moderate success. But these recipes I can make without having to adapt! Woot! I am so excited to try all these recipes that I actually printed them all out and put them in a pretty pink binder with little tabbies to seperate the different sections (I also decorated the section, like this one below:
Again, uber-dork! But hey, at least I have fun, right?)
Anyway, I am also addicted to the blog of Meg Cabot (author of the Princess Diaries books). She is hilarious, and as I am writing my own young adult book series, a huge inspiration to me. In a bizarre twist of fate, she was also recently diagnosed with celiac disease!!! What the heck, right? I love it!
This YA series of mine is one of the main reasons I decided to start blogging. It's about a girl going off to college for the first time, whose name is Felicity (this makes the title of my blog a play on words: her name, plus the word felicity, which means "happiness." Again, consult Pride and Prejudice). She's overweight, a Mathlete, and always sick. During the course of the first book, which is called "Gluteus to the Minimus," she is diagnosed with, of course celiac disease. I realize I'm biased and everything, but I think the book is hilarious. Right now I'm sending it out to agents, trying to get it published, and also working on the next book in the series. So, needless to say, none of my family/friends are working on books that they're trying to get published (don't forget, I am the uber-dork). I need a place to vent, to record my trials and tribulations and highs and lows. Hence this blog.
Of course, I'll also be venting/sharing about my burgeoning cooking skills (if they do, in fact, burgeon), what Felicity is up to, if I hear from any agents, how the big move is going, restaurant reactions to my gluten-freeness (which can range from wonderfully caring to hilariously mean), and how much of my hair I'm pulling out due to the insane workload of graduate school.
One last facet of my uber-dorkness. I said before that I love Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I love her because she's just like me. See, Elizabeth had all kinds of health problems. She was pretty much bed-ridden, she was so ill, but she still wrote beautiful poetry from bed and became famous. I, too, am sick a lot. Not just the whole celiac thing; I also have asthma and wicked allergies for which I have to get shots. If it weren't for modern medicine, I would totally be bed-ridden just like Elizabeth. She probably just had asthma and/or allergies, just like me, but because she couldn't get treatment for them she was near death for a huge portion of her life. I'm just lucky I was born in the twentieth century.
Elizabeth had something I didn't, though: her father was way psycho, and didn't want her to have any kind of social life outside their house. She wasn't allowed to meet anyone and couldn't go anywhere, even when she did feel up to it.
She also had a happy ending. Robert Browning, who was also a famous poet, read her poetry and fell in love with her. They started exchanging secret letters, and she fell in love with him, too. They arranged to elope, and he helped her escape from her father's house. They ran away to Italy and married, where the warm air (much better than damp, cold England's), made her lungs better, and she led a full, happy, active life. She and Robert even had a baby.
I love stories like this. Shauna, the Gluten-Free Girl, has a fantastic love story as well (you can read about it here, and there's an extra-beautiful part to the story in the epilogue of her book, which is also called Gluten Free Girl. Read them both immediately and you'll find yourself curling your toes and cooing in delight). I love real life love stories. Everyone always says that the idea of "the one" or "true love" is a stupid myth, or whatever, but it's not. Stories like this are proof positive and are encouragement to all of us singles not to waste our time on a bunch of losers. If it's not right, don't try to fool yourself into believing it is. Otherwise you might be so busy fooling yourself that you miss the real thing when it comes! So hold on, fellows. The real thing is worth waiting for.
So anyway, yay to Shauna and yay to Elizabeth for being strong, independent women who were also uber-dorks (one a literary giant and one a great writer AND amazing cook), who also found true love. May we all take a page from their books!
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