Sugar and temples, mostly

Well, hello.

Things are good. Mentally, I've been feeling great. I haven't felt sad for a little while now, which is cool. I've even been feeling up to facing my fears and getting back into driving again (I drove around my block!! Wooooo!). Physically, I've been all over the map. I got a gross nasty cold, and have determined that granola, Cheerios, and Frosted Mini Wheats definitely have too much sugar for my poor little head. Sad face. But eating un-sugary cereals has made a big difference so... buh. Goodbye, delicious, sugary breakfast cereals.

I'm looking forward to the upcoming temple dedication in Brigham City. Temples are cool. You should like them.

But you don't actually have to like them. But you'll at least agree that they're pretty, right? Good.

Oh, and here's another exciting thing upcoming. Tomorrow, actually.

If you aren't watching Parks and Recreation, shame on you. Shame.

Progress

My experiment is going well, and I do believe I may have found a trigger: added sugar.

I had my first migraine in about two weeks yesterday, and I'm almost positive it was because of all the sugar I had the day before. Tricky, right? So, if it does end up being a trigger, that's great, because I'll avoid stuff with lotsa sugar and probably feel healthier. But it will also be sad, because I like sugar.

Craziness: my stake was COMPLETELY REORGANIZED last weekend, and I have been moved into a ward that didn't exist before last weekend. I just don't even know what to do with that. The good-for-sure news is that we have Church at 11:00 now instead of 9:00...

Cooking is boring

Hiya, cool people. I don't mind cooking, but I don't love it, either. I usually only cook stuff that takes 20 minutes or less to prepare. I figure that a lot of people might feel the same way; they'd prefer NOT to eat Ramen everyday, but they also don't want to roast a turkey on a spit.

So to make your life a little easier, here's a list of some of the awesome things I've been cooking lately:

Delicious onion-flavored baked veggies. Instead of cutting up a bunch of veggies though, I just used a bag of frozen vegetables, plus some diced potatoes. Bam. Super easy and DELICIOUS.

Chicken-potato-tomato thing. This was especially good because a friend brought me some fresh, garden-grown tomatoes the day before, and they were so so good.

Marinated chicken. I was surprised at how good this was, considering the kinda weird ingredients. I intend to make it again sometime.

Chicken rice soup. I used brown rice instead of noodles, since I had lots of rice leftovers. I followed the recipe very loosely in general, actually, but how can you mess up soup, anyway?

Sweet potatoes!! This is so easy to make it's almost silly to have a recipe for it. We like to have beans with this, but I'm thinking rice would be pretty good, too.

SMOOTHIES. This is my afternoon snack pretty much every day. I don't technically have a recipe for this one. I just put half a banana, some strawberries (or raspberries) and rice milk into a blender and blend. I like to use a small amount of milk to make the smoothie really thick. But maybe you're weird and like to drink fruit-flavored milk.

Fer cute

Today is day three of my migraine-safe diet. It's been prooty good, although it's hard to come up with quick snacks I can eat throughout the day that aren't fruit, veggies, or rice cereal. Suggestions?

In other news, I've been further improving my legit crochet skillz. The tiniest project I've done was this little set of flower earrings; I'm planning on making other little crochet things so the earrings can be switchable.

I'm currently working on a big ol' basket. It looks weird in this picture. I'm (loosely) following this pattern, but I used t-shirt yarn that I made instead of normal kind.

I made what the interwebs folks call a boutique bag. Look at it.

Finally, I've been crocheting around the edges of GAJILLIONS of baby blankets and stuff my mom made. It's strangely addictive.

Elimination

What do the following foods have in common?

I love all of them. Also, I can't eat any of them for the next 6 weeks. Along with beef, soy products, corn products, caffeine, and sugar.

What is this madness, you ask? I'm embarking on my second attempt at an elimination diet to see if I can identify any migraine triggers. Here's how it will work: for two weeks, I eliminate all the above foods from my diet. After that, I challenge each food, one at a time, to see if reintroducing it into my diet triggers migraines. When I introduce a food back into my diet, it is only for 24 hours; after that, it's gone again. I don't want different types of food interacting with each other somehow and messing up my experiment.

I'm gonna be eating lots of fruits and vegetables for the next little while. Wish me luck.

Lately

Exciting things have been going on around here for us. First and awesomest, we get to work at the Provo Temple as ordinance workers! (Once renovations are over.) I say "awesomest" because it's a cool word, and also I've always wanted to work at the temple, and now I have my chance. It seems like you can only do it when you're really young, or when you're really old, so why not now?

Second and pretty awesome, I've been feeling normal, as in happy. I'm still not up to my former level of productivity or self motivation, but feeling so good makes up for that.

Third and sort of awesome, I'm rededicating myself to figuring out my migraines. I've had pretty bad migraines since I was about 14, and in the past few years, they've become more severe and I've had them more frequently. While the good news in the migraine department is that they aren't nearly as gross and painful as they have been, the bad news is that I've been getting them almost every day for the past month and a half, so... ugh. I'm hoping that keeping track of daily activities and (eventually) talking to a specialist will help me conquer this illness so I can have an even more normal life.

Fourth and also awesome, I really like my ward. Maybe it's because I'm more interested in socializing now, but this ward seems friendlier than the last one I was in.

I know this has been a pretty boring post, so sorry about that. To make up for it, I'm going to include some pictures of babies with animals.

Also, this:

I'm so excited (...I just can't hide it)

This is currently on our wall. You can feel jealous:

And these are things I'm excited about:

-General Conf'rince (also called "Gen Con" by a select, elite, incredibly attractive few) is this weekend and I'm going to watch it on the comfy couches at Jordan's and my families' houses. This also means that delicious food will be involved.

-I only had one migraine this week, and I slept it off. If you don't know anything about me, you don't understand how amazing this is.

-I had the coolest field trip ever on Tuesday; I went to the library. My History of the Book class visited the Book Repair place and I fell in love with the idea of binding books even more. I am totally jealous of the people who work there.

-We probably maybe have a sweet place to live next spring. As nice as our current place is...it's not really that nice.