Tough Nothin'

Tough nuts. (Damn, no nuts...)  Gluten, when over mixed in say, muffins or pancakes makes your baked goods tough.  That's why I call the girls overmixed-muffins, because they are tough-muffins.  What do I call them now, because that weird bread I made today was a kind of crumbly!  The day was tough, and the bread was me, and the girls were straight up evil.  Yes I know, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.  They can have apples.  They both had apples today.  I can get a bag of organic apples from the store by Sasha's school for a decent price.  All I think about is food.  Food; why who is itching where; and how soon who can go to bed.  Thankfully the girls just think about being girls.  Unfortunately, the girls just thinking about being girls does not include anybody's sleep habits. (read: the girls in their devious childishness didn't let Momma nap today.)

It feels like I'm treading water, staying afloat to be sure but not really making progress.  Which can't be true because this is day two of my head truly not hurting.  Persistent exhaustion is ALWAYS better by itself, rather than accompanied by head and neck pain.  I perhaps had higher hopes for the bread.  It's expensive as crap for the mix plus shipping, and I feel like I just have so far to go in fiddling with the bread machine and other flours and sources, that it's further exhausting to even think about.  But maybe today was just hard because my precious little tough muffins forgot that I spent the morning wearing myself out making them bread and then didn't let me nap, which is by the way an extremely well-established routine and something completely necessary to my anti-migraine existence.  Napping that is, not the bread-making.

This GF, Corn Free, Nut Free bread making is a total bitch.  And I didn't realize how stressed out about it I was.  We've been doing fine without bread, no one's going hungry, no one's complaining.  But having bread in the house again was a thrill, and even my Mom admitted that she missed having it around.  What it did to me was show me how desperate I am to have some sort of convenience or comfort or maybe triumph when it comes to food.  I can make a killer smoothie and it's kind of exhausting.  Making plain yogurt into "yummy" yogurt isn't as bad but it's still work. By the time lunch is over and dinner is through I'm ready for bed on both occasions.

But maybe it's more than just the bread.  Maybe it's just that it would be nice to be able to pack a sandwich and take the kids someplace, like a birthday party.  I dread going to parties of any sort for any reason.  First, they wear me out because 1.) I'm a people-person and I can't control myself when I get around people and 2.) I have to feed my kids which is an infinite hassle requiring lots of planning and effort and while that sounds bad you have to consider, I'm on a painfully thin shoestring budget of energy.  Wheat, Corn, and Migraines. Crazy, not Nuts.  Put all that in a couple of loaf pans and you get today; weird bread, (sandwichable; barely, packable; no) kids who learned some hard lessons, and one Momma who is ready for a better day.

I feel like I should feel better for being two days with no migraine pain and for successfully (just barely) sandwiching fresh (weird and very small) bread today.  I suppose the reality that I am still so enslaved by migraines even when not enslaved by pain hit pretty hard.  I like to forget that as often as possible.  But maybe this means Botox is kicking in early?  Botox or Corntox...;)