I know you probably woke up this morning thinking to yourself, "What is stressful, frustrating, and beautiful all at the same time? Seems like something Casey would know the answer to..."

I do, and it's pictured above.

It's not frustrating because it's unplayable. It's frustrating because it's NEARLY playable. I ALMOST sound really good on it.

But not quite.

This photo was right outside the Keller auditorium as I left my last Nutcracker performance of the season. As you can see, there's very little distinction between the roads and sidewalks here.

The bad snow started a week ago. All my students were cancelled this week. I've only left the house a few times, and now we're supposed to get yet another two inches of snow tonight. It's fine for a while, until we realized this bad weather is inching dangerously close to Christmas Eve, when we have a flight booked for Colorado. We are starting to get nervous about leaving on time.

I also think I'm starting to go slightly stir crazy. I think I'd just like to get out and take a walk tomorrow. You know, bundle up in my winter garb and venture out, just like the good old days in Chicago. Except not nearly as much eat-your-face temperatures.

Updates on the bunker situation as I get them.

Giddy!!

I can't post what Tom's Christmas present is, lest he read it here and the surprise be ruined.

But I am INCREDIBLY proud of myself. I am one hot fiancée.

For all you non-Portland readers...

I am not complaining... TRUST ME. I would take Portland weather over Chicago weather ANY DAY.

But, as I understand it, this kind of thing just doesn't happen here.

Tom and I awoke on Sunday morning, still discussing the plan to take me downtown to my Nutcracker performances. I stumbled out of bed and peeked through the blinds. Then, chuckling, I pulled them up to show Tom the treat that was outdoors: SNOOOOOOOW!

At that moment, a whole inch had fallen on the ground, and it was still snowing big, fat, luscious snowflakes, the wind whipping them around - supposedly to increase the panic that was about to ensue.

See, Portland just doesn't get snowstorms like this. People who grew up in Portland and never ventured elsewhere don't really know how to drive in the snow. And the city doesn't have a fleet of snowplows to take care of such emergencies. Every once in a while, you'd see a truck drive by on the news, dropping gravel, but other than that, people pretty much stayed off the streets. Except for a slight bit of hustle and bustle around the Keller to see the Nutcracker, Portland was pretty ghost-towny. And school cancellations were flying off the charts by 5PM.

Off one inch of snow. One inch!! One inch in Colorado means whipping out the good sneakers to walk to school, and leave the ones with duct tape holding them together at home.

Of course, Colorado has a very different type of snow. It's just snow (not icy usually), and an average of 300 sunny days a year usually melt it off pretty fast. Portland's humidity and moisture content turn the roads into a pretty thick sheet of ice - all it takes are a few tires to pack it down on the road. There are lots of chain and studded tire rules here, especially for the freeway. And when Tom and I took the truck into Portland, we saw many, many unfortunate and abandoned cars on the side of the road that just couldn't make it up the hill. Not having lots of snow perhaps means not knowing that your basic 2-door sedan just won't cut it up Barbur Boulevard.

Right now it's calm outside, though the snow and ice still remain. My students are cancelled for tomorrow, however, as most school districts here are taking another day off. And we're expected to have another heavy snowfall come Wednesday. It's been an interesting, bunker-style situation. Should be a slow Christmas shopping week as well... and that's just weird.

Of course, the snow sure is getting me in the Christmas spirit. It's not sneaking up on me like it did last year. Now I've got the inkling to make hot chocolate, but this was the first GF recipe that I could find. No agave nectar or stevia in my pantry - I'm a bad, bad celiac. I think a trip to Whole Foods tomorrow is worth braving the ice sheet.

So I wasn't technically "tagged" with this... I just stole it from Reva. And the tag doesn't really work for me: going in to my pictures folder, opening up the 7th folder and posting the 7th picture. I don't have 7 folders yet. (I imagine a wedding will change ALL of that.) So I simply got my 7th picture in iPhoto, and that is the gloriousness you see above. The fellow getting pummeled is my hubby-to-be, while the fellow doing the pummeling is his buddy from tech school. This was taken last year, when the Rockies and the Phillies were vying for a World Series spot, and both these guys felt they needed to represent their respective home states. (In case you had forgotten, the Rockies made it all the way to the World Series, only to be swept by the Red Sox... booooooo.)

I have actually been thinking about this guy and his fiancée a lot lately, and was happy to find this picture. Last year, that couple happened to be at as similar a point in their lives as we were. She's a really kickass piccolo player looking for an orchestral career, and after an undergrad in music, he decided repair was the way to go. Sound familiar? We devised a plan last year that both she and I would make it in to the same orchestra, and then our hubbys could open a repair shop together. Then they ruined everything by moving back home to the east coast once repair school was done. And now? Well, we just miss them like crazy.

It turns out Portland, while one of the coolest cities ever, puts you pretty far away from a lot of places. We find this longing for our friends creeps up on us a lot. And our families often seem out of reach. Knoxville's an even harder place to access than Portland, it turns out: on Thursday we're taking an hour flight to Seattle, a 4 hour flight to Cinncinati, and then another hour flight into Knoxville. We're leaving the house before anyone should humanly be expected to function in the morning and getting in just in time for dinner. My brain is still doing backflips trying to figure all that out. I just hope the exhaustion from travelling will get me to bed at a decent hour and I can get up early enough to offset the jet lag. (I guess I'm not that worried about sleeping in... Thanksgiving with my family includes a 6-year-old with some big lungs.)

I always seem to wax nostalgia in this thing - don't get me wrong, life here is still pretty great. We've got great friends who we've all sucked in to our world of card games, and just last night I had a tremendously fun and educational time reading Beethoven quartets with some great people. Seems like there's this constant balance, though - how often to feed the part of me that misses people, and how often to indulge in the present. I think they're both necessary.

For now, though, I'll do neither. Our apartment's a mess, and I've got it in my head that it's going to be clean before we leave. Who knows whether or not this will actually happen. :)

People are talking!!

I love comments on my blog posts! I'm just sorry it's taken me so long to get around to them! I promise now I'll start talking back. :)

You never quite know the joy of a functional digestive system until you live without one for many, many years. I have to undo over a couple decades of bad eating habits. After thinking that cramping and running to the bathroom half the time after eating was just normal digestion, I've trained myself to eat through the pain. I've only seen the benefits of eating as the nice tastes that hit my tongue, and not the numerous other ones; a healthy diet can give you more energy, you can actually CONTROL your bloatiness every month based on the things you eat, and being properly fed has an enormous impact on your mood.

And thank goodness for Chipotle, an unexpected gluten-free haven that encompasses joys of both the palette and the gut.

It's taken quite a while of diet adjustment, and I'm still learning. No dairy yet, as my belly's still healing - lactose is difficult to digest for weak intestines. And not too many vegetables or fruits at the same time - too much fiber can bring the cramping all back. However, today's lunch cuisine was one of Chipotle's chicken burrito bowls, with rice, black beans, two different types of salsa, and lettuce sprinkled on top. No dairy, no gluten, plenty of protein, and not too high in the calorie count, either.

Not only was it delicious, but I'm typing this entry now almost two hours after eating it, and my stomach feels WONDERFUL. No cramping. No hasty digestion and running to the bathroom. A calm and relaxed belly is an amazing feeling, and every time I think of the way it used to be, I tear up a little.

It's going to take a while to feel like this calm of a stomach is normal. But the relief I feel over this is 25 years worth. And that's not an exaggeration. I can't believe there are people living with this condition for 40, 50, even 60 years before somebody figures out what's wrong with them. My quality of life has gone up enormously.

I also had a great night at Fred Meyer last night where I hit the gluten free MOTHERLOAD. After grabbing just a couple things from the gluten free shelf, I ventured out, more from curiosity than anything, to find something else that sounded really good. Some sort of Thai noodles really struck my fancy, and I found myself in the ethnic food aisle. (Still not sure why they call it that... they could say the Mexican and Asian food aisle and be more accurate.) I found tons of alternatives, from the Thai Kitchen and A Taste of Thai brands that were ALL gluten free. In fact, the Thai Ginger instant soup I had last night (the closest thing I've had to Ramen noodles in a long time) would be an easy conversion to egg drop soup.

The hunt for things I can eat can become exciting with the right attitude. Lumping the products on the table in front of Tom last night, pronouncing with each package, "Gluten free! Gluten free!" felt amazing. I'd have to say, if I had been told that I HAD to have an autoimmune disease and was forced to pick which one, I'd take this one in a heartbeat. Celiac disease, in this day and age, is completely livable.