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Life On The Fringe: Yasmine's Mirrored Blog The caffeinated ramblings of author Yasmine Galenorn

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Yasmine Galenorn

Yasmine Galenorn


Last Updated: 10/31/2009

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Gender: Female
Sign: Capricorn

City: Seattle Area
State: Washington
Country: US

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October 24, 2009 - Saturday 
Bone Magic ARC contest over on my Blogger blog--ends tomorrow night.
http
//yasmine-galenorn
.blogspot
.com
Blogger links here are usually disabled so put the above together or find the link on my website: www.galenorn.com
Yasmine
10:08 PM 
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October 19, 2009 - Monday 
Talking about ghosts. www.runningwithquills.com

Remember: you can always catch my blog on my Blogger site. The link is on my website: www.galenorn.com
 
Yasmine
6:09 PM 
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October 4, 2009 - Sunday 
Interrupting your regularly scheduled reading for a few announcements:

All three of my personal blogs are now rolled into one. I’m trying to condense where I’m at on the net more and more—I simply don’t have time for all the social networking I did. Right now, all posts from my Gluten Free Blog and my D’Artigo sisters blog have been integrated into my main blogspot blog. In a short while, that blog will be located on my website and I will be abandoning blogger. As of after this posting, I will no longer be re-posting blogs on MySpace either. I will still be with the Witchy Chicks and with the Fire & Ice Blog.  You can find the link to my blogspot blog on my website: http://www.galenorn.com

FYI: at this time, my husband is taking care of my MySpace and my Facebook. I seldom go there. So don’t expect answers from me there—he will answer the important questions but he doesn’t have time to read through most of the comments on Facebook. I also feed my Twitter into FB, so you can keep up with me that way if you like.

Yes, I’m on Twitter, but I do not autofollow there. I try to answer my @ replies as soon as I can, but I no longer answer writing questions, and I do not answer personal magical questions for people. Period. If you have questions about the books, etc, you can leave me an @reply on Twitter, you can post them in my forums, or you can leave a comment on my blog on blogger, and eventually on my site.

My forums have been streamlined and are open as usual for business. ~grins~ Play nice. I removed a forum recently because over the years, I’ve had repeated problems in that forum with people bashing other beliefs than their own. It will not be reinstated.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. ~grins~

Yasmine
6:28 PM 
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October 4, 2009 - Sunday 
Okay, so another day in the life of an author…who has gluten problems and food allergies and intolerances. When did this all get so hard? Well, truthfully, if my mother and stepfather had been diligent parents, it would have been hard (in a different way) from the beginning, but they weren’t. I’ve been allergic to milk since the day I was born. It almost killed me when I was a baby—my mother was sick and for the first six months of her life she couldn’t hold me, let alone breastfeed me. When they’d bottle fed me with milk, I’d projectile vomit so hard they were afraid I’d choke. I wasn’t ‘thriving’ so the doctor finally told them, “Don’t give her milk.”

My sisters (who were taking care of me) switched me to sort of nondairy formula, whatever might have been around back in 1961 (yeah, I’m admitting to being that old), and nobody thought to see if I had other problems. I gained weight and kept the food down, and they quit worrying.


But my body didn’t stop with the ‘let’s rebel against food’ stage. I had constant respiratory problems when I was a kid, chronic bronchitis, walking pneumonia, tonsillitis, colds, every time I turned around I was sick. I gained weight at the drop of a hat, and this was before junk food was common—especially in our house.

When I was fourteen, they put tubes in my ears to help them drain and the doctor told Mom they better allergy test me. Which meant 160 cuts on my back to go through two days of testing.

The results were unsettling. At that time, they didn’t test me for many foods, but of the ones they did, I came back allergic to rye, wheat, milk. And a host of others—pollens and molds and wool and all sorts of delightful things. Bird feathers and mice (yes, mice) among them.

Even though my allergy tests were there, in swollen bumps and itchiness, my stepfather believed that it was ‘all in my mind’ and proceeded on the idea that if you feed someone allergic to—oh, say wheat—more wheat and whole wheat at that—it will prove they aren’t allergic to it. So nobody explained to me that I shouldn’t eat these things, though it made sense on a gut level, and I was fed whole wheat bread and yummy big chunks of cheese…yeah, that did my body good. Not.

And now? My allergies have shifted, and years of eating crap I’m allergic to spawned a host of other problem foods. Some—allergens, yes, some—intolerances. All—problems. My diet feels so convoluted now that I need a fucking computer just to keep track of it.

But I’m one of the lucky ones so far. So far my allergies have not proved anaphylactic, but I’ve had symptoms. Tingling lips, tongue swelling a little bit, confused and disoriented. Can’t play Russian Roulette anymore with food. But I’m the first to admit, it makes it incredibly hard. And my sister has had anaphylactic responses and we’re allergic to similar foods.

If I were just gluten intolerant, just allergic to milk, it would be easier. But no, a host of other foods trigger my asthma, trigger painful stomach cramps. Which brings me to my post tonight.
When a restaurant offers a gluten free menu, and you order from that, shouldn’t they listen? Of course they should. Outback is usually pretty damned good, but tonight we ordered takeout from them and bingo…A) my baked potato was AWOL…totally missing in action (we found out all this after getting the food home). B) My steak was supposed to be gluten and seasoning free—I cannot have black pepper, it severely triggers my asthma.

I cut into the steak, figuring hey, sad the potato’s gone but it could have been worse…and then I take a bite and as my mouth fills with pepper, I think “Oh crap. If they screwed up on the pepper, did they mess up on making sure it was gluten free? A lot of those seasonings do contain gluten.”

In the end, I didn’t try a second bite. I left the steak for my husband for tomorrow. And tonight? I’m in the middle of cooking my dinner—which I really didn’t want to do tonight—and thinking about how some people just don’t understand that…hey, some foods CAN hurt you. And if I were anaphylactic, the one bite of pepper could have killed me.

Thing is…with allergies…at any time they can go from mild to deadly. I’ve played Russian Roulette for years with a few things, fudging when I had to, rebelling and eating stuff I shouldn’t. My lungs cloud up, my joints hurt, I ache, I get cloudy-headed, my lips tingle, and until I got a clue about how badly I react to foods like garlic, ginger, and yeast, I used to get stomach cramps so bad I couldn’t even stand up.

I’m disappointed. I wanted a nice dinner, I didn’t want to cook, and I figured hey—I won’t have to worry because it’s Outback. But from now on, when we eat there, we eat in the restaurant because at least there, I can send it back. I emailed them, figured better to go to corporate about it. When I hear back, I’ll let you know what they said.

Yasmine
3:02 AM 
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September 28, 2009 - Monday 
Want a chance to see Camille and Delilah in slightly different poses? My cover artist, Tony Mauro, has his 2010 calendar ready to go and it’s beautiful—and it has alternative poses of Camille from Dragon Wytch and Delilah from Night Huntress in it, as well as ten other gorgeous, fantastical women.

Check out Tony’s site—if you buy it from his site, he says he’ll autograph the calendar!

Yasmine
6:28 AM 
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September 23, 2009 - Wednesday 
Apparently I have a booksigning on Saturday, September 26th at 2:00 PM. Mercury retrograde and a computer glitch on the other end kind of ate the emails confirming this so I assumed it wasn’t going to happen and didn’t advertise, but it is, and I am! LOL

I’ll be at: Barnes & Noble, 300 Andover Park W #200, Tukwila, WA 98188 And I’ll be answering questions about the books, perhaps reading a page or two from The Shadow of Mist (from Never After), and generally just chatting away. If you’re around please come say hi! (I have a feeling with so little time to promote, I'm going to be sitting around talking to myself a lot--happens a lot at signings! LOL).

Yasmine
5:13 PM 
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September 20, 2009 - Sunday 
I’ve decided to post my posts about diet, etc., on my regular blog now instead of just on my Gluten Free Kitchen Witch blog—I’ll post recipes over there. Because my diet has become such a part of my life now. It has to be. Most of my regular readers know I have food allergies, but there’s more to it. I’m starch sensitive, it raises my insulin levels way too high which can, in turn, eventually bring on diabetes because the body can become resistant to insulin. I’m not there…yet, but I am in pre-diabetes. So I decided to get serious and I’ve been on a 99% starch and refined sugar (I can have fruits and coconut milk yogurt) free diet for going on eight weeks—and the blood sugar level is coming down, I’m starting to turn it away from the pre-diabetes, and that’s a good thing.

But it’s hard. Giving up a big part of the diet is difficult. And for the past eight week I’ve fudged and eaten dairy to give myself more variety, but that has to stop too. My dairy allergy is just too bad and my body’s inflamed from it. So what do I eat at this point? Meat, fish, poultry. Fruit (avoiding bananas and grapes for the most part). Non-starchy veggies and an occasional dip into a sweet potato. Some soy. Tree nuts. Rice-milk cheese. Almond and soy milk for my lattes. Coconut milk. Once in a while (meaning not every day or even every other day) dark chocolate.

But yesterday I let myself have a starch day. I had already planned that on holidays I’m eating what I want, in moderate amounts, because unless I’m anaphylactic to a food or strongly allergic to it, I have to have those safety-valves. And now and then my body, not my cravings but my body, tells me it needs a little starch. Which, yesterday, it did—in no uncertain terms (TMI how, but trust me).

So I ate moderate starch for two meals yesterday. And that was fine…within half an hour I felt much better. Today I kept to my diet. But I was taking a shower tonight and found myself very depressed. When I listened to my thoughts, I heard things like, “I blew eight weeks worth of dieting…” and “I failed…I’m back to square one.” And that—right there—is how I’ve self-destructed in the past.

So I thought it through this time. No, I have not blown eight weeks of dieting in one simple day off. If I kept it up and didn’t return to my diet, yes I’d be spiraling back down to the bottom again. I’d be back to square one if I turned around and just let myself go again. But I’m not doing that. I’m back on my diet and, even though I was going to have a day off from the diet tomorrow at Sam’s brunch, I’m not going to do that now. Because yesterday was my day off.

Next one planned: on Samhain I’m eating roasted red potatoes—a traditional dish I make. And Thanksgiving—hell, I’m eating mashed potatoes and dessert.  Our annual Yule party: treat time! Yes! But in between, all those days in between, I plan on being on my diet, and so I can know that those three days between now and the end of the year are not going to break my diet irrevocably, nor am I going to allow them to spiral me back into eating the ‘old’ way again. They’re reward days for my hard work in going after my health. They’re safety valve days.

So tomorrow, at Sam’s birthday brunch (his birthday was Friday), I’m going to be good and stay on my diet and eat lots of good healthy meat and rice-cheese and fruits and my dairy-free salmon dip on cucumbers, and I’m going to let our friends be the real joy of the day instead of looking at food for that.

So you’ll probably be seeing more about diet in this blog now…because it’s a part of my life for good it seems.

Yasmine
7:02 AM 
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September 19, 2009 - Saturday 
Limited quantity of most Otherworld postcards available: http://www.galenorn.com/index.php?input=AS-contact.htm

Witchling postcards no longer available.

If you want Moon Stalkers swag, you have one month to send in for a swag bag. After that--postcards will only be available of the current book. Bookmarks will still be available.

So get your SASE's in to me by the end of October (and go look at the link to find out more info, don't ask me how to here, please. ~grins~)

Yasmine
7:10 PM 
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September 16, 2009 - Wednesday 
Blogging about the seasons. Come drop me a note over there!

And since MySpace disables bloggers links, here's my standard jpg so you can read it and type it into the addy bar:

Photobucket

3:29 PM 
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September 10, 2009 - Thursday 
I've finetuned the playlist for Harvest Hunting (OW, book 8: Delilah's POV), so here it is (and as usual, it's a long one):

Beck:
Farewell Ride
Nausea

Bravery, The: Believe
Cher: The Beat Goes On
Chester Bennington: System
Cobra Verde: Don't Play With Fire
David Bowie: Golden Years
Deftones: Change (In the House of Flies)

Evans Blue: Cold

Everlast:
What It's like
Mercy on My Soul

Fleetwood Mac: The Chain

Gabrielle Roth:
Black Mesa
Zone Unknown

Gary Numan:
Innocence Bleeding
Dominion Day
Down in the Park
Dream Killer
Hybrid
My Shadow in Vain
Prophecy
She's Got Claws
Stormtrooper in Drag
The Angel Wars
Tread Careful

Heather Alexander:
Blood Brothers
Fallen Angel
March of Cambreadth
Camden Town
Wolfen One

Jace Everett: Bad Things
Jay Gordon: Slept So Long

Jethro Tull:
Mountain Men
No Lullaby
Rocks on the Road

King Black Acid:
One and Only
Soul Systems Burn

Lee Dorsey: Give it Up
Little Big Town: Bones
Low and tomandandy: Half Light

Nirvana:
Lake of Fire
Plataeu

Oingo Boingo:
Nothing to Fear
Home Again
Elevator Man
Deadman’s Party

Ringo Starr: It Don't Come Easy
Sarah McLachlan: Possession
Simple Minds: Don't You (Forget About Me)
Steeleye Span: Blackleg Miner

Tangerine Dream:
Beaver Town
Dr. Destructo
Grind

Tina Turner: I Can't stand the Rain

Tori Amos:
Blood Roses
Muhammad My Friend

Warchild: Ash A

Zero Seven: In the Waiting Line
6:58 PM 
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