{"id":43727,"date":"2018-08-24T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T10:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=43727"},"modified":"2018-08-26T01:35:17","modified_gmt":"2018-08-26T05:35:17","slug":"ding-47","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=43727","title":{"rendered":"Ding 47!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It really does sneak up on you. One minute you’re in your thirties, having fun<\/a> adventures<\/a> and raising adorable little kids. Then you glance at your watch and suddenly you’ve got grey hair, your kids have turned into adults, and people are giving you strange looks because you’re wearing a watch and it’s 2018. <\/p>\n

I’m uncomfortably close to 50 at this point. I’m pretty apprehensive about that number. It has all sorts of alarming old-man implications I’m not ready to accept. I guess I’ve got three years before I have to face that moment. The problem is that at this age, three years is nothing. <\/p>\n

So what did I accomplish with this, my 47th year on this planet?<\/p>\n

Earlier in the week<\/a> I said it was “Birthday Week”. I was forgetting that it’s actually birthday and anniversary<\/em> week. As of this week, Bay – my oldest – has been married a year. She’s since moved to Texas with her wife. My middle kid – now named Peter – came out as trans and went with Bay. Peter took his first name from Peter Parker, since Spider-Man is his favorite hero. He took Telemachus for his middle name, which is also my middle name. So that’s cool. <\/p>\n

This means it’s been a bit of an empty nest year for Heather and I. <\/p>\n

I began a book just a few days before my last birthday. In the year since then I managed to finish it, but now I’m having trouble getting it out the door. Of all the projects I have going, this is the one without a hard deadline. Which means that it’s the most habitually neglected of my projects, even though it’s the one I’m most excited about. I really like this book<\/em>. I don’t even care if it sellsAlthough, if it DOES sell that would be super-helpful.<\/span>. I just want it to be done so people can read it. Hopefully we’ll get it out the door in the next couple of months.<\/p>\n

In more encouraging news: Next week you’ll be getting two columns from me: One here, and one at the Escapist. Yes, this is really happening. I’m pretty happy. Also, we’ll resume the GTA series by starting in on GTA V. That should be fun.<\/p>\n

For Tomorrow We May Diet<\/h3>\n

Why does this stuff taste so good, and veggies taste so dull? Someone's going to pay for this.<\/div>
Why does this stuff taste so good, and veggies taste so dull? Someone's going to pay for this.<\/div><\/p>\n

I’ve had to give up nearly all starches in my diet. If I eat a starch, I get a rash and a bunch of other problems. Starch is basically the only food I care about, so this totally sucks. Salt in the wound: When I explain my problem to people, everyone is 100% certain they understand my condition and that the explanation for it is simple. You have gluten intolerance! You’ve got a food allergy! You have leaky gut syndrome! It’s all caused by the pesticides they use these days! You just need to eat more [semi-obscure fruit or veggie you can only find at Whole Foods] to balance out your diet!<\/em> The more people I talk to, the more I’m convinced that nobody has any idea what they’re talking about. This is all folk knowledge with a glossy coat of quasi-scientific language. <\/p>\n

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but the one thing I can never eat is corn. Corn makes me sick to the point where I break out in sores. In the United States, everything has corn in it<\/strong>. Whole grain wheat bread? Corn syrup. Potato products? Corn starch. A can of tuna? Yes, some idiot felt they needed to add corn to that for some reason. The result of all this nonsense is that I have a hard time finding things I can safely eat. And then once I do find it, I generally hate it. On top of this, I’m constantly solving mysteries about what made me sick this week. Ah! I didn’t think to check this processed meat for corn!<\/em> <\/p>\n

When I was young, I wanted the powers of Spider-Man. These days if a genie offered me any super-ability I wanted, I think I’d choose the ability to eat bread<\/em>. <\/p>\n

I don’t want to end this on a down note, so here’s something positive: I mentioned last year<\/a> that I’d begun strength training in an effort to keep the weight off. I’ve pretty much stuck with it. About 10 months ago I hit a plateau. I haven’t gained more strength or muscle mass, but I also haven’t gained back the weight. That’s fine. The whole point was to break the cycle of gaining and losing weight, and it seems to have workedAlthough I guess being allergic to everything that tastes good is also helping keep my weight down.<\/span>. <\/p>\n

Anyway. That’s the year. Despite my whining, it was a pretty good one. To celebrate, I’m going to go scroll through pictures of birthday cake and mope. It’s been a while since I got to enjoy a really good mope, and I think I’ve earned it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It really does sneak up on you. One minute you’re in your thirties, having fun adventures and raising adorable little kids. Then you glance at your watch and suddenly you’ve got grey hair, your kids have turned into adults, and people are giving you strange looks because you’re wearing a watch and it’s 2018. I’m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[610],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landmarks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43727"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43749,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43727\/revisions\/43749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}