Food For My Kid with Multiple Food Allergies

This is the last of my Food Allergy Awareness Week Posts and I thought I'd go through the process of what it's like to buy and prepare food for my son.

To start, when you look at it all at once, it's a lot to manage and it's all very overwhelming.  Although it would have been great to somehow download this right from the get go, we are still learning the nuances of feeding our kid with multiple food allergies.  This is exactly why we don't expect anyone else to be able to cater to our needs when it comes to food. The best thing anyone can do to make us feel welcome and comfortable is to just not offer any food to our son and to not hold food or be near food when playing with him. An extra level of comfort is added if everyone washes their hands and wipes their mouths after eating (or drinking - especially beer), but ultimately we know we're in charge of keeping him safe so we try to do all the hard work, but appreciate any offered support. 

Here's how it goes when we shop for O's foods:

Some of O's allergens are covered by the FDA's requirementfor labeling and should be listed in the ingredients using "plain English" as Wheat, Peanut, Tree Nut, Egg, or Soy.  They essentially have two options for labeling: the word “Contains” followed by the name of the major food allergen – for example, “Contains milk, wheat” – OR -- in the longer ingredient list in parentheses – for example, “albumin (egg).” 

Allergy families tend to only trust certain brands after a while because there are frequently errors in labeling and you've got to read every ingredient anyway every time since ingredients and formulas change all the time.  ALSO, the use of advisory labeling (i.e.,  “may contain,” “processed in a facility that also processes,” or “made on equipment with”) is - at this time - voluntary and optional for manufacturers. There are no laws governing these statements or what they mean, so they may or may not indicate if a product could have come in contact with a specific allergen during the manufacturing process. So if they don't plainly state that their product is made in an allergen-free facility, we have to call or email the company to make sure that they don't share manufacturing lines with the allergen because there is a risk of cross contact with the allergen. 

We also have to call the company to make sure that anything like "natural flavors" or "artificial flavors" or "spices" or "natural colors" does not contain gluten (wheat, barley, rye, some oats) because a "gluten free" product can still technically contain wheat and barley, and rye in small amounts that might not affect someone with gluten intolerance or celiac disease, but could be enough to trigger a reaction in a person with IgE mediated allergy.  And since those non-wheat, gluten containing grains are not included in the top 8 allergens that must be labeled clearly, we need to double check those.

Anyhow.  Onto the list of O's allergens:

Wheat (aka. Bran, Bulgur, Cereal extract, Couscous, Durum, Einkorn, Emmer, Farina, Germ, Gluten, Kamut, Matzoh, Matzo, Matzah, Matza, Malt, Seitan, Semolina, Spelt, Triticale, Wheatgrass, Wheatgerm, Wheat berries, gelatinized starch, modified starch, modified food starch, starch)

Peanut (watch out for Lupine flour - not a peanut, but high risk for reaction in peanut allergic people.)

Tree Nuts (aka. may be labeled as: Almond, Beechnut, Brazil nut, Bushnut, Butternut, Cashew, Chestnut, Filbert, Ginko nut, Hazelnut, Hickory nut, Lichee nut, Macadamia nut, Nangai nut, Pecan, Pine nut, Praline, Pistachio, Shea, Walnut)

Egg (aka. albumin, lysozyme, ovalbumin, surimi)

Soy (aka. edamame, miso, natto, shoyu, soya, tamari, tempeh, tvp, tofu, vegetable gum. O can eat Soy Lecthin and Refined Soybean oil)

Coconut (can be labeled as a Tree Nut)

Barley (Not covered by FDA's labeling laws and can be listed as: brown rice syrup, caramel color, malt, malt vinegar, maltose, fructan, brewer's yeast)

Rye (Not covered by FDA's labeling laws)

Legumes (Not covered by FDA's labeling laws - O had a reaction to green beans and lentils in the last six months. We're waiting to confirm these allergies with a test at his next allergist appointment.  Until then, we're avoiding those and other legumes which we don't eat regularly including adzuki beans, black beans, soybeans, anasazi beans, fava beans, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), kidney beans, lima bean, etc.)

*Oats (Not covered by FDA's labeling laws.  *O is NOT allergic to oats, but anything with oat in the ingredients must be marked as gluten free or they can not be used because there is a very high risk of cross contamination in manufacturing.)

Mind you, the "Plain English" label laws only apply to food - not to cosmetics, bath and body products, or cleaning products - so for any of that stuff, you have to really get familiar with how all of the above might be used as a derivative in various products that you use every day.

Then, after all the label reading to confirm nothing up there shows up in the food we're trying to buy, there's actually preparing the foods.  Cross-contact and cross-contamination with allergens in the kitchen is a big reason allergy families don't eat out and don't really eat food prepared elsewhere. 

For example, a knife that has been used to cut a regular bagel and is only wiped off or rinsed with water before being used to cut a gluten free bagel could still have enough wheat allergens remaining on the knife to cause a reaction in a person who has a wheat allergy.  All equipment and utensils must be cleaned with hot, soapy water before being used to prepare allergen-free food. Even a trace of food on a pan, spoon or spatula that is invisible to us can cause an allergic reaction.  Certain items, like serrated knives, cutting boards, cracked stoneware, mesh strainers, which can not be totally cleaned in those tiny nooks and crannies should probably not be used.

It's a lot to process - we've had several good friends and family ask us what they can buy for O to have at their parties. We generally bring his safe foods along with us but if you want to offer some safe foods just keep them in their original packaging for us to read. Anything that's not in the package is usually not considered safe. We are beyond grateful that anyone ever even considers accommodating us at an event where there will be a lot of food, but we never expect it because we know just how hard that work is.  That said, one or two safe snacks can go a long way in making us feel like part of the fun and just bear with us as we chase O around watching everything he touches while wiping things down.  It's what we do!

Five Things I Want People To Understand About Food Allergies

1) No one knows why food allergies are on the rise.

There are many theories about what has spurred the rise in life-threatening food allergies - but there is no single answer. It can be frustrating to read about or to be told about all the things I should do or should have done to prevent my son's food allergies - especially from strangers who don't know the first thing about the lifestyle we led before my son's anaphylaxis.  If only I had introduced allergens earlier, introduced allergens later, breastfed longer, weaned earlier, took Vitamin D, took probiotics, avoided GMOs, c-sections, vaccines, antibiotics, pesticides, antibacterial hand wash, cleaned my house less, hand-washed my dishes, micromanaged my gut flora, fixed my leaky gut, did a coffee enema, ditched the Western diet, adjusted my Qi... the list goes on and on.

Personally, I'm sure all of these things have potential to have some kind of impact on the epidemic rise of life-threatening food allergies, but the simple fact is that there is no single answer and you, stranger, have no idea what my breastfeeding schedule or hand washing choices were before my son was diagnosed. Even among the food allergy community you'll find exceptions to every new theory that pops up - several families with identical twins that have one child with food allergies and one without raised on the same foods, schedules, environments and with no other notable differences. While it might seem like a good idea to tell a food allergy parent that you've figured out what their massive team of doctors, research, and network of food allergy families have yet to understand because you read a post the other day on Food Babe that says food allergies are caused by invisible shreds of toilet paper lingering in your water supply, here's a tip: keep it to yourself.  Odds are, that someone living with life threatening food allergies has been researching this beast from the day they were diagnosed and has already decided on the best course of action for their own family.  If you're really desperate to get in on the conversation, join a food allergy support group, listen to the stories of people in the thick of it and ask how you can help make the world a little safer for them.

2) There is no cure for food allergies...yet.

Epinephrine is not a cure for allergies or anaphylaxis but it's a crucial tool for a food allergic person to have in their arsenal. Epinephrine can often reverse the progression of anaphylaxis, but it must be administered quickly. Even in multiple doses it may not work 100% of the time if it is administered too late.  It is however the only lifeline someone experiencing anaphylaxis has, so it is vital that a person with serious food allergies carry epinephrine with them at all times.

Other things that are not a cure for food allergies: Benadryl/antihistamines, immunotherapy, diet changes, meditation, etc.  All of these things are or could be integral aspects of food allergy management that can allow a person with food allergies to better tolerate their allergens and survive in an allergy unfriendly world.  As it is right now, immunotherapy is a long term treatment that decreases sensitivity to food proteins and promises to give people with food allergies a fighting chance should ingestion accidentally occur, freedom to board a plane without fear of a reaction from airborne or trace particles, freedom to touch surfaces without worry. Still, being able to tolerate up to 15 peanuts without experiencing anaphylaxis is completely different from being cured of food allergies. There is no cure for food allergies, but the research happening now is robust. Hope is on the horizon.

3) Peanuts are not the only allergen that can kill.

Actually, any allergen has the potential to trigger life-threatening anaphylaxis. It is theorized that even people who are severely allergic to grass, could experience anaphylaxis if they absorbed too much of the allergen through a scrape in the skin or consumed it.  It's not exactly the peanuts that are deadly, it's the anaphylactic reaction that's deadly and a person who is allergic can experience an anaphylactic reaction to any allergen.  My son's anaphylaxis was triggered by wheat and egg. Anaphylaxis can be triggered by foods, biting or stinging insects, medications and latex and is occasionally reported after direct exposure to radiocontrast media and after exercise.  This is why its important to take every allergy seriously and if you've ever had a serious reaction to talk to your doctor about carrying epinephrine.

4) Food Allergies and Food Intolerance are not the same.

But they should both be taken seriously for different reasons. People should treat individuals requesting accommodation with food intolerances as seriously as individuals requesting accommodation with allergy.  Even if an intolerance is not life threatening the way an IgE mediated food allergy can be, an intolerance can harm someone's health and change their behavior.  

What may seem like semantics is an important distinction because they are fundamentally different conditions causing a different chain of reactions in the body, requiring different levels of scrutiny in food labeling and preparation, different treatment approaches, and different research for cures. I understand the word "allergy" gets the point across to the average person who won't take time to learn the difference, but without that immune system reaction, it's technically not an "allergy" and it's a disservice to use the terms interchangeably.  If you believe you have a food allergy or perhaps Oral Allergy Syndrome, contact a board certified allergist for testing to confirm which foods trigger a histamine release and could progress to more serious reactions requiring epinephrine. If there is no IgE mediated response, you may have a food intolerance that might also be helped with strict avoidance of the offending food, or in some cases be alleviated by certain kinds of enzyme supplementation.

Using food allergy and food intolerance interchangeably downplays the very real effect a food intolerance actually can have on a person, and it creates confusion when trying to educate the general public on the fact that food allergy can pose a severe and immediate threat to life.  If you have a food intolerance but call it an allergy and occasionally sneak a bite of food containing your allergens because "you'll just deal with the consequences later" or "a tiny bit won't hurt much" you contribute to the misconception that food allergies do not need to be taken seriously 100% of the time and you put the lives of food allergic people at risk.

5) Labeling laws are SO important.

People with food allergies rely on honest and complete disclosure on the ingredient panel of a food label to stay safe. While there is a legal requirement to disclose the Top 8 allergens in plain English, if you've got an allergy that's not covered by the Top 8, you've got to do a lot more legwork to make sure your food is safe to eat because your allergen might not have to be disclosed in plain English.  A mislabeled food item or a label that doesn't disclose the risk of cross contamination put lives at risk. It may seem like a hassle for a company to have to keep track of every potential allergen that could come into their factory, but when someone's life hangs in the balance, it's a small price to pay.  The number of voluntary recalls that happen because of allergen contaminated food can be terrifying and as a result, families with food allergies treasure the companies that make extra efforts to label clearly for allergens, reduce the risk of cross contamination, and provide clear information when an allergic individual or parent calls for manufacturing practice information. New laws are coming into place which will make allergen labels even more detailed and make companies more liable for good manufacturing practices which is definitely a step in the right direction.

Navigating a Social Life with Food Allergies

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, things have changed significantly since my son's food allergy diagnosis.  Having a child alters your social life anyway, but having a child with multiple life-threatening food allergies requires a bit of extra effort and planning on our part (and sometimes on the part of our friends and family) to make sure O is included.  

Many times the safest course of action is to simply turn down invitations to activities that are inherently difficult for us to manage (restaurants, food festivals, carnivals, etc.) In general, think of all the fun stuff you do that revolves around food and assume that unless we've got about a month of lead time to arrange for child care with someone who is trained on O's allergy care and management in our allergen free home, we'll have to politely decline the invitation.

Anyway, here's what we do for the situations that make us leave the safe haven of our home:

Everyday 

Any activity that requires that we leave the house also requires some planning.  Toddlers don't need as much in a diaper bag as babies, but at two-and-a-half, I still carry a fully loaded bag everywhere we go.  It has the basic kid supplies, but it also carries his epinephrine allergy kit, wipes for all surfaces he'll put his hands on, and a full day's worth of snacks.  He might not eat a full day's worth of snacks in one outing, but we don't have the option of eating out if I can't get us home in time for lunch or dinner and if he suddenly decides he's starving, I can't pick up a safe meal for him anywhere. My bag is full of his safe snacks, just in case we end up delayed, lost, stuck in traffic, or lose track of time when we're having fun.

Most Days

Any activity that will have us out of the house during lunch or dinner time means that I've got to pack us all a lunch to eat out. You can see some of the lunches we've packed on my Instagram.  Depending on how long we'll be out, if I'll have access to a microwave, or if I'll be able to refrigerate our food will determine what I can pack.  If we're planning a full day out or to different stops, then I pack us all a lunch and dinner to-go and try to pack things I know taste good at room temperature and don't spoil easily.  If we're doing someplace fun like Disneyland (which is considered an allergy haven for many people thanks to their recent efforts to be inclusive of food allergy families), I pack double the amount of hand wipes and I'm also sure to pack some cookies or a cupcake from Sensitive Sweets so we can have a special treat too.

I avoid my son's allergens when I'm with him.  Part of it is so he doesn't feel like he's missing out on anything, but the bigger reason is that it's easier for me to manage his risk of contact if I'm not eating his allergens either.  If I eat his allergens while he's around, I need to wash my hands and mouth before I can touch him and I need to make sure there are no crumbs left on me anywhere. (Even then, I still worry about trace amounts that may be on my clothes. On those rare days when I eat out without him, the first thing I do when I come home is wash up and change out of my clothes.)   If I skip out on his allergens when we're together it's easier to manage a toddler that might need my help with feeding himself or picking himself up after a tumble.  Plus, this way I'm always open to the spontaneous toddler cuddle when he feels like giving me a big fat gooey kiss right on the lips.

Holidays

The stress of the holidays is magnified for food-allergy families because of how much food goes hand in hand with every major holiday - Valentine's Day candies, Easter egg hunts, Independence Day barbecues, Halloween trick-or-treating, Thanksgiving... well... everything, and Christmas.  

That said, we don't see a lot of our big extended family any other time of the year except for these big holiday gatherings so we make an effort to show up and see everyone.  Sometimes we'll pack our own meal to eat, and other times we'll eat before hand and just show up to say hi to family.  Even showing up without eating can be nerve wracking as kids go running around eating bread sticks, or trail mix with nuts, or eating scrambled eggs before scrambling to hunt eggs filled with mini Snickers bars.  Most times we camp out in a corner and my husband and I take turns watching the kiddo like a hawk while the other makes the social rounds.

I've also managed to modify many of our family's holiday favorite meals into allergy safe versions. We have our own 100% allergy friendly celebration at home and everyone eats the same food.  It's a lot of work making everything from scratch on your own, but it's 100% worth it.

Special Occasions

Birthday parties, weddings, and other special occasions are another case-by-case situation.  If we can arrange for child care, then O will stay home.  It's safer for him and less stressful for us.  It's sad that he misses out, but it's also not worth the risks.  If it's a child-centered event where it only makes sense for us to go if O is going, then we pack our food and go.  If it's not at someone's house, I'll call ahead and ask about their food policies.  If it's at someone's house, I'll ask them what they have in mind for the menu and plan to pack the same things plus a cupcake or cookie so we don't stick out too much eating our own packed foods. Some friends and family have taken great steps to make sure entire parties are safe for O to be around... I can't even explain how truly and deeply grateful we are for that.  It's not something we've ever asked for, but to be able to let O run around with other kids knowing that the snacks they were just served are free of his allergens is such a huge relief.  For a moment, someone else shares that burden with us and the weight of our responsibilities seems easier to carry for weeks after. 

Vacations

We do go on vacation!  Even though we're not comfortable flying with O's allergies right now, we hope that we will be when he is older and has a better understanding of what a reaction is.  Camping or remote destinations are also off the table until he's a little older. Before we go on vacation, we locate the nearest 24 hour pharmacy and Emergency Room closest to our hotel. We program those into our GPS and phones. We ask our allergist to give us a paper copy of our epinephrine prescriptions so in case our epi-pens are damaged by heat or lost, we can get a prescription filled on site without a hassle.  We use a Google Spreadsheet to plan ahead and I make a list of every meal I'll need to cook and try to guess on what we'll want for snacks. We locate the nearest Whole Foods or Mother's Market and put a shopping trip on our itinerary.  We still pack about half our food to take with us, since the nature of specialty allergy-safe foods is that it might not be carried at all locations.  Anything we're relying on eating, we pack.  We pack our own condiments, spices, oils and cooking utensils/pans.  

If we can get accommodations with a kitchen, sky's the limit.  If our accommodations don't have a kitchen, I bring a Cool-A-Tron mini fridge and a cooler with dry ice (for freezer foods), and plan out a series of microwaveable meals.  Either way, once we're in the room, we wipe down every surface and check under every bed, table, and nook and cranny to make sure the cleaning staff didn't miss a potential allergen (we usually find something! a cashew under a sofa, a candy wrapper under a bed - so we can't miss this step!) I call ahead and tell the hotel we've got severe food allergies, and they put a microwave on hold for us that I clean once we're in the hotel. This year I may also consider a toaster oven or an electric skillet for cooking, but still need to do some research on what is the safest to use in a hotel room for cooking. The photo of our family's bentos above was actually a meal I cooked during our last vacation for us to eat while we were visiting the zoo. We've even done group vacations with the strict rule that there is no outside food allowed in our room, but everyone is welcome to enjoy the food we've packed and cooked. We make it work!

Spontaneous Outings

Bahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahah. No.  Besides, spontaneity is overrated (my post-food allergy mantra.) 

SO, if it seems like we never go out anymore and we turn down your invitations to do rad things all the time...you're probably somewhat right.  I assume that if you're asking us to hang out with you, it's probably because you like us and we like you, so I have a feeling you already understand why it's tough for us to be at a lot of events.  Please keep inviting us, we'll say no when it just doesn't seem safe for us, but we miss you and when the stars align just right, we'll jump at the opportunity for all three of us to get out and play.

Food Allergy Awareness Week - React with Respect

Today marks the start of Food Allergy Awareness Week, and this year's focus is on encouraging individuals without food allergies to react with respect when someone tells them they have a food allergy.  Now, for most people I know, reacting to food allergies with respect and compassion seems like a no-brainer, but you only need to spend a few seconds in the comment section of any food allergy related post to get a taste of what kind of mean spirited things are said to or about people with food allergies.

With that in mind, my goal for this Food Allergy Awareness Week is to write about what it's like to raise a child with multiple life-threatening food allergies.  Hopefully one of my posts will reach someone who might think twice before saying or doing something inadvertently hurtful to someone with a food allergy or to the parent of a child with food allergies in the future.  I realize that people who say or do things like that often don't fully understand how serious food allergies can be and may not necessarily be acting from any sort of malicious place, but even with the best intentions, the wrong move may inadvertently put the lives of food-allergic people in danger.

My son is now two and a half and is allergic to five out of the "Top 8" allergens and more. I remember walking out of the hospital after my son's experience with anaphylaxis and seeing the outside world in a completely different light.  I was terrified.  It was like being asked to let my son grow up in a field of land mines - just one accidental step in the wrong direction could be disastrous. 

I knew how I could keep my child safe from "tricky people" from bullies, from car accidents, from drowning, but I had no idea how to keep my child safe from anaphylaxis.  This was galaxies beyond what I had imagined I needed to prepare my 14 month old son for.  As the diagnosis came in and we learned that wheat and egg had likely triggered his anaphylaxis, and that further testing showed he was also allergic to barley, rye, soy, tree nuts, peanuts, and coconut. I started to fall apart mentally. I knew peanut allergy could be deadly, but death by wheat seemed so outrageous.

I had wanted to be a relaxed parent who would give my child all the tools he needed to stay safe so I could let my kid explore the world and get his fingers dirty on his own.  Oh, he just ate a handful of dirt? Cool. Live and learn.  I wanted to continue traveling the world with him the way my husband and I did before he was born. I planned on us traveling overseas to meet my family, and to show him all my favorite places on the planet.  Planes will be out of our reach until he is old enough to tell us about the start of any allergic reactions. I wanted him to experience a world of foodie flavors with us and eat at all the new restaurants that pop up in our food-fanatical city.  We don't eat out with him anymore and we won't eat out with him again until there's a cure.

Before my son's anaphylaxis, my husband and I went out to dinner regularly and took him along with us.  When he was nursing, it wasn't a problem. As he started solids, we'd order items off the menu for him that I wouldn't normally cook at home and he'd happily chow down - a very well behaved baby in all kinds of restaurants. He'd usually come home with a mystery rash or his eczema would flare up days later.  At 8 months old, we went to a pizza place for a birthday party.  He didn't eat anything there, but wound up with a splotchy rash on his face from friends who had held him or kissed him after eating pizza. We didn't know about contact reactions then. We had no idea that these things could be food allergy symptoms and I had no understanding of the concept of cross contact.  We didn't put two and two together until after his diagnosis and then the guilt poured in.

I look back at photos of him at four months old, eczema on his face, hands wrapped in sleeves so he wouldn't scratch himself raw - why didn't I think to eliminate allergens earlier?  I was on an elimination diet while nursing him, but I didn't know how thorough my elimination needed to be until later. Besides, our pediatrician at the time, and his dermatologist were pretty positive his rashes were not food allergy related and that they were just a thing that happens to babies and that my elimination diet probably wouldn't help things clear up.  They were wrong. And it turns out, many physicians are sorely under-educated on the realities of food allergies.

As the months passed and we got better at doing the allergy thing, I'd settle into a zone and feel like I'd have control of things pretty well and that we had found our new normal. I felt like I didn't miss the old normal.  This was fine.  We could do this and everything would be awesome despite food allergies. Then something.  Something minor.  Something that most people don't even notice would snap me out of my positive attitude and remind me that our normal was not everyone else's normal and things would not be normal for a very long time... if ever.

I remember being at Costco and having a breakdown as I realized all the food that was in everyone's hands, being passed out, dropped on the floor, spilled on shopping carts, could kill my one year old. It was as if I was watching madness happen in slow motion, people frivolously playing with some kind of biological weapon.  Of course it wasn't a biological weapon to any of them, but all I could see was the threat all around me.  I watched parents feed their children free samples without even a second thought as to what was in them and I wondered if they were ever afraid of the food they put in their kid's mouths. Before food allergies, I had never given it a second thought.

I remember sitting at In-N-Out and watching a child younger than my son being fed french fries and a burger and becoming so sad that my son wouldn't experience In-N-Out. I wondered why that made me sad. I had never planned to feed my kid fast food and I rarely eat it myself, but crossing that off my son's "firsts" list put a cloud over my day.

I remember being at Gymboree where a friendly mother handed out cookies to all the excited children in the lobby while I scrambled to get my son's shoes on and run out of there before there were crumbs everywhere and my kid was asking me why he couldn't have a cookie too.

A fruit snack brand we trusted changed their ingredients to include wheat starch as the very last ingredient.  One more treat we crossed off our very short list.  A few weeks later, a freeze dried fruit company we had been purchasing from since O's first solids changed manufacturing facilities and now was processed in a plant that also processed wheat and other allergens.  Another snack off our list.

Little things.

As my son gets older, his allergies have not improved and we're getting him tested for three more foods that he's had unexpected reactions to in the last year.  We get closer and closer to the age where he's going to school and I'm terrified.  I have to trust another person to know his allergies. To keep him safe. To check labels. To consider ingredients in non-food things like glue, finger paints, play-dough, and water colors. Trust young children to not intentionally or unintentionally expose my son to the foods that will hurt him or could cost him his life. I can barely keep up, so I don't know how I'm supposed to let people who aren't completely obsessed with him do it.  We've talked about homeschooling... at least until he can self-administer his epinephrine, read labels himself, and say no to candy and cupcakes when they show up at school unexpectedly and everyone else is eating them. 

I'd make a terrible home school teacher.

I don't want my son to be the "special little snowflake" everyone assumes that food-allergy parents want their kids to be.  I want him to shovel food without a care down his adorable little gullet like the average kid and to never be singled out for something he can't eat or touch without the risk of dying. I want a cure in his lifetime.

Things have changed so drastically from the way I imagined parenthood, but I know more than ever that the best way to make the Universe laugh hysterically in your face is to have expectations and plans for your life.  I've also learned perspective.  Everyone is fighting a battle we don't see on the outside and for every parent that has it easier than me, there's a parent that has things twice as hard. We all do what we have to do.

We're getting better and better at managing the allergy thing, but we face challenges every day. I try not to complain much about our life with food allergies, but it was and still is a difficult adjustment that's worth every hurdle. This Food Allergy Awareness Week, I hope to share how much our every day lives have changed to keep our son safe and encourage everyone to react to food allergies with respect and compassion.

29.

I'm pressed for time, but I just have to crank out a blog tonight.

Today I am 29.  Tomorrow I will be 30.

I started my first real blog when I was 19.  It was really stupid, but I think I downloaded all that stuff into an archive before I deleted that account.  I should go back and read it sometime.  I'm pretty sure it was all about the boys I had crushes on and stuff I did at work and school.

I'm not sure if my blogs have changed much in the last 10 years.

My 20s were good to me.  I married a man who makes me laugh every day. We bought a house, got a dog and we traveled. A lot.  Still, we live a simple and incredibly blessed life.

I partied like I should have when I was in college and I made friends that will be my friends for the rest of my life.  Nice people who like being nice to other people.  They make me realize how good humans can be.

In my 20s, I came to appreciate my parents in a different way although I still don't show it as much as I should. I came to value my brother as a best friend.

After spending a chunk of my teens being teased, I became comfortable enough with my own nerdiness to not only embrace it, but to wear it as a badge of honor. There are some nerd things I still keep in my nerd closet, but maybe in my 30s I'll realize that it doesn't matter if I'm teased anymore.

I did and said things that I'm embarrassed to admit.   I'm pretty sure I've blocked some moments from my memory for all eternity.  My opinions about the world have changed.  It's perpetual motion, I guess.

Growing up, I was convinced I would die at 23 (I wrote a blog when I was 22, panicking about my upcoming doom) and now that I've made it 7 years past my own personal death clock, I'm pretty pumped I still get to be here.  I'm not sure where my death clock is set, but I've fallen more and more in love with life every day that I get to wake up.

Aside from my latent superpowers awakening, I don't expect much to change when I turn 30 tomorrow.  I still plan too much, get too anxious about things, and still over-think things.  I doubt that will change when I'm 30, but I'm still excited about it.

I wonder what I'll write at 39.

Sayonnara 20s.  Thanks for all the awesome.

xoxo,
D

Falling Out of Facebook

Photo by opensourceway, opensource.com via Flickr. Created by Ruth Suehle

When I first joined Facebook, my tagline was "I hate Facebook."

A year into my Facebook addiction, I realized my old tagline wasn't true anymore and I changed it to "I love nachos."  This is still true.  I REALLY love nachos.  

The strange thing is that I'm starting to find truth in my old tagline again.

With the roll out of the new Facebook Timeline, I've been seriously contemplating a significant reduction in my participation on the site.  As Facebook has applied changes over the last year, I've realized that my privacy features are not completely under my control and as a result I've (believe it or not) reduced my participation on the site.

About a year ago, I created a profile for Apple and decided that I wouldn't friend her so I could confirm that my privacy settings were correct. The "View As" option on FB didn't have a "Friends of Friends" setting and I had been getting strange comments in person about stuff on my profile from people I wasn't friends with.  

Looking at my page from Apple's profile, I was often stunned by the amount of stuff that showed up on my profile even though I had everything (except a few albums and my friends list) set to "Friends Only."  

For example, my wall is set to "Friends Only,"  but viewing my page from Apple's profile, I could see a number of posts because I had tagged other people in those posts. Apple was friends with one of the people I had tagged, and as a result, she could see my original wall post and all the comments that followed. 

I realized that my privacy setting no longer guaranteed that my wall posts were only for my Friends. I had to also rely on the privacy settings of my friends to keep my wall conversations private and my privacy was only as good as the privacy settings of my Facebook friends.

After that discovery, I went through and removed all the tags on my wall posts as far back as I could find. It seemed to solve the problem.  I had already been filtering tag requests for photos and wall posts, but I hadn't really considered that the tags I made on posts on my own wall were as public as the people I tagged in them.

There have also been a few strange moments where I had commented on a post of a friend's wall and subsequently had 3 of my friends - who had no direct connection to the original poster - make comments in response to my comment on the original post.  

The "D commented on Smitty Smith's photo" line showed up in the Ticker and even though my friends didn't know Smitty Smith, they were now a part of a conversation on his wall.  Smitty had just converted to the new timeline and  didn't realize he needed to adjust all of his privacy settings for every individual post. Now people he didn't know were having a conversation on his page and my comment on his page was completely viewable to anyone that decided to look at his page that day.

In the older versions of Facebook, you could tweak your settings so that comments on other people's walls or pictures didn't show up on your wall or in the news feed even if they were on a public page.   Someone would have to go to that public page, like it, and then search for my comment to see it. Facebook now serves up those public comments to your friends on a platter. 

Remember when you'd read comments on other people's pictures and not be able to understand what was happening in the conversation because people were responding to questions that didn't appear on your screen?  That was because the mystery person had their privacy settings set up so that people that were not friends with them couldn't see ANYTHING they wrote ANYWHERE on the site.  I want that back. 

I understand that my comments on public pages are public - just as this blog is public. I would just prefer that I could control how those conversations are broadcast to my extended network - I'd like the option to turn off the feed to the ticker, turn off comment tracking and to selectively accept specific tags.  I would prefer that there be an option to keep myself cloaked in privacy even when participating on a public page.  

I have no problem gushing about my Doctor Who fanaticism among other Doctor Who fans on a fan page, but most of my Facebook friends are not Doctor Who fans and I don't need them seeing every comment I make on a post about an episode they never watched and don't care about. 

I end up having to assume that everything I post anywhere on Facebook is probably public and permanent even if I never intended it to be so.  I have to choose to participate publicly or not participate in the community at all.  I've been choosing not to participate at all.  

I don't think I'll quit Facebook when my profile is forced to transition to Timeline (because I think it's important to stay in touch with changing tech) I just think I will find myself removing everything from it rather than risk a privacy fumble. I had to do this with over 300 blog entries I deleted on my old MySpace profile after their MySpace 2.0 made blogs public even if the profile itself was private. I did save a copy of all of them before deleting and likewise, I will probably just export a copy of my Facebook page for my own use before I start deleting pictures and posts.  

It's a shame, because I loved sharing with my friends - I just don't like unintentionally sharing with everyone else and their mother because a mutual friend happened to comment on my photo or tag me in a wall post.

I know Facebook is free - but so is my e-mail.  If my e-mail policy suddenly changed and I had to mark every message in my inbox "private" or else it would be shared with all the people in my address book, I think I would cancel my e-mail account without hesitation.  

I know that I am not the consumer in the Facebook relationship, I am the product being sold.  The more I share, the more free information I give to Facebook to sell to its advertisers and sponsors. On top of all the unexpected sharing,  the app-linking drives me nuts, I hate the "Highlighted Stories" in the feed, I hate the Ticker features, and I don't play games or participate in polls. I don't know if Facebook is the best social networking site for me anymore anyway.  

What I'm getting at is that it's not so long Facebook... it's just, I'll see you way less Facebook, and you'll see me way less. 

Besides, I have Pinterest to kill time now.

If you're looking for privacy info and resources related to Facebook, check out this site: http://epic.org/privacy/facebook/in_re_facebook_ii.html 

Mini Hoodlums

This morning as I was driving into work, I spotted three middle-school aged boys standing outside my friend's apartment complex.  They had backpacks on, so I assumed they were waiting for a bus or something to come pick them up. I had a bad feeling about three mischievous seeming boys climbing on and around the apartment complex signage at 6:50AM, so I proceeded with caution.

I watched them as I drove past them and glanced back at them in my side view mirror to see the three of them simultaneously raise their hands in the air and THROW SOMETHING AT MY CAR.

I continued driving and waited to see if the stuff they threw would actually reach my car.

It did.

Three thuds.

Thankfully there was no one on the road because I made a calm and conscious decision to pull a Mr. Wheeler, slam on my brakes, throw my car in reverse and go hauling back TO SCARE THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF THOSE KIDS.

Which I'm pretty sure worked. 

My car is old.  I love my car, but a few pebbles hitting it on the side won't hurt much of anything... but this was about the principal of the thing.  1) KIDS.  WTF? and 2) PARENTS. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR KIDS ARE?  THEY'RE THROWING THINGS AT CARS!

So anyway, I watched in my rear view mirror as the three boys went pale the moment I slammed on my brakes.  Then, as they saw my car switch into reverse, I watched as they RAN LIKE THE WIND back into the parking area of the apartment complex.

Like I said, my friend lives in that complex, so I'm fairly familiar with the area. Much to their dismay, I pulled in and followed the little suckers as they kept running around the corner.

I was already running late for work, so I didn't want to waste too much more time but I saw the direction in which they ran and spotted the area in which they were hiding.  So I rolled down my windows and stopped my car within earshot and pretended that I had been on my phone. I started talking obscenely loud:

"YES OFFICER, THREE CLEAN CUT BOYS WITH SHORT BLACK HAIR, BLACK SHORTS, TWO IN RED SHIRTS, ONE OF THEM IS WEARING A BALL CAP AND THE LAST BOY WAS WEARING AN ORANGE SHIRT... OK... SO YOU'LL SPEND ALL DAY TRYING TO FIND THEM? ... GREAT.... THEY'LL DO TIME IN JUVENILE HALL?... PERFECT.... THANK YOU POLICE OFFICER."

I looked in my rear view mirror as I drove away.  I think (maybe in my little heart, I just hoped) that one of those boys squatted behind a bush was crying. If so, mission accomplished.


A lesson to all the little childrenses of the universe: Don't frack with my car. Ever.

Good ol' AIM

Mike and I recently finished watching "Freaks & Geeks" (awesome - Netflix it if you haven't seen it) and have just started watching "Undeclared" as a follow up (even though it's not a follow up at all. They're both Judd Apatow TV projects, so it was kind of a follow up since we felt abandoned after Freaks and Geeks ended without telling us everything about everyone!!! WHY TV!? WHY!!!?)

Anyway, Undeclared follows a group of college freshman, circa 1999 or 2000, so the music, the clothes and the references remind me a lot of my freshman year in college.  I started looking through my old backup files from my old computer and found a small stash of old AIM chat sessions I had saved from late 1999 - early 2000 when AIM chat was our Facebook.  Most of my really hilarious (in my touched up nostalgic memory) conversations were lost when my parents' computer was replaced, taking with it any funny AIM conversations I had saved on it.  I think I backed most of them up onto floppy disc... but who uses a floppy disc for anything nowadays?  The only ones that I seemed to still have were the ones I had e-mailed to myself after the chat which meant it took place in the University computer lab.

The first one I found was an AIM conversation between Mike and I.  We had talked about this particular AIM conversation before - he was up in the Central Coast, living in the dorms and had just broken up with his high school girlfriend.  I was kind of starting to date someone at my college,  but was still living at home and had not really talked to most of my high school friends in a while.  Here we logged onto AIM,   to reflect on our high school relationships and fess up to old feelings.  Seriously.  I don't remember thinking it was awkward... but reading the stuff I wrote now, makes me cringe... we were SO strange. 

Mike called me "man" a lot.  Like, "thanks man", "totally man", "you got it man", "talk to you soon, man."

At the part where I admitted to having a secret crush on him in high school and explained that I had just recently "got over it" I followed up with "I hope there's not weirdness between us now."

Wtf.

Who says that in real life?

Apparently me.

I mean, I married the dude!  Obviously, we're totally cool now and it turns out those feelings were kinda legit.  So why does reading this conversation now make me feel like hiding under the sofa?  Shouldn't I be feeling "awww... we were so cute?"  We tried to talk like calm grown-up adults, discussing old feelings as if it were no big thang and instead we come off like really really weird eighteen year olds.  Really weird.

 

I found another chat - between me and a good friend from high school (SunsetBBQ... you know who you are) in the Fall of 1999 - and I wrote the entire chat in ALL CAPS.  I WAS INTERNET SCREAMING THE WHOLE TIME.  What am I?  New?

So awkward.  

And while I'm tempted to delete them out of private embarrassment, I can't bring myself to do it.  It's like looking at me in another dimension.  I can actually read how stupid I sounded.  AND when I have grown teenagers that make me maybe want to bang my head against a wall, I'll be able to look at these lame things and put everything into perspective. Right?

I had read about a monthly open mic event done in NYC where instead of people reading poetry, they read pages from their childhood/teenage journals.  I would totally be down for that.  I've got to go find my journals at my parent's house somewhere. I think I have like 40 volumes worth of material.  I had a lot of crap to write about from the ages of 11 to 17 that NO ONE ELSE WAS ALLOWED TO READ.  Nail polish, boys, parents, tv, homework.  I'm sure it's thrilling.  And humiliating.  Well, the kind of humiliating that probably leads to humility.  So.  Not too bad.

Revenge of the Cuppy Cakes

Once upon a time I attempted to make cupcakes for Mike's birthday.

From scratch.

You may remember the annual Halloween parties we'd throw at the Nevada house and later at the Chandler house that would usually end up falling on or right before Mike's birthday.  We'd have a crazy kegger and at midnight, we'd sing Happy Birthday and enjoy a slice (or three) of cake with our fancy red cups filled with Guinness (...and Newcastle...and Great White...and Widers...and Stella)  Tasty.

The year we got married - and at the height of the cupcake craze - I decided that I would make cupcakes rather than buy the standard sheet cake, so as to impress all of our friends with my amazing cupcake making skills...something I somehow believed was instinctual among the female of the species. 

I was to be the prime example of the perfect domestic wife... one who not only had vast prowess in the kitchen, but who could also carry the end of the flip cup chug line (through a straw. It's a skill.)

I had never actually made cupcakes from scratch, but I had a new hand mixer and I had made cakes before, so I figured it was just a difference of containers.  I was going to make a set of chocolate cupcakes and a set of vegan pumpkin cupcakes.  I got to work on the chocolate cupcakes, since they would be the easiest.

I burned half of them. Mistake No. 2. 

Yes.  Number 2.

No biggie, I told myself.  And, no, it didn't matter that the chocolate cupcakes that were not burned resembled the Hunchback of Notre Dame more than an actual cupcake because I'd make up for it in the frosting. 

Which I also had never made before. 

But I'm good at following directions.

Cinchy. 

Mistake No. 3.

I whipped up the batter for the set of pumpkin cupcakes, poured them in their cups and set the time for baking.  Meanwhile, I followed the instructions for the frosting to go on the chocolate cupcakes and poured that goop into my brand new piping bag and began piping away.  

The piping bag exploded.

Everywhere.

Sad face.

Mistake No.4.

By this time, it was late afternoon.  The party was that night and I was sitting in a kitchen covered by exploded frosting. Now I fully understood that Mistake No. 1 was thinking that I could make cupcakes from scratch THE SAME DAY AS THE PARTY.

I wiped the frosting off my sad sweaty face and said, screw it, I'll just spread the frosting onto these cupcakes.  I made a second batch of frosting and got to work.

And then I learned - frosting melts on warm cupcakes.

Mistake No. 5.

I got so frustrated I ate a melty frosted cupcake.  

And then spit it out.

The cake part was fine.  

The frosting tasted like Cap'n Crunch vomited in my mouth. 

Maybe it was the salted margarine I used INSTEAD of butter since I used all my butter up in the cake batter and that first round of frosting that now coated my kitchen walls.  Maybe it was the 1/4 cup of granulated sugar I substituted for confectioner's sugar because I didn't have enough in my pantry.  It really doesn't matter because it was DISGUSTING.

The timer went off and I scrambled to get to the oven to pull out my pumpkin cupcakes in time. - I'd have to deal with the frosting dilemma later.  When I opened the oven I was devastated to see 24 fully baked cratercakes sitting where I had expected to see 24 cupcakes.

Apparently you shouldn't throw in that little extra pumpkin sitting at the bottom of the can into the batter to make the cake more moist.  I became angry at the recipe - WHO USES 4/5ths OF A CAN OF PUMPKIN!? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THE REMAINING 1/5th!?  I MEAN SERIOUSLY. I'm still mad. This may have been Mistake No. 6... but no. I get a bonus point for being LOGICAL. CLEARLY.

I took out those crater cake bastards and tasted.  

Not bad.  

For a muffin.  

Mike had wandered down to check on me. He walked into the kitchen and saw... the danger room.  I looked at him like an inmate in an insane asylum and said "TASTE!" and shoved a pumpkin flavored cake crater his direction.

THIS was Mistake No. 6.

I think he was scared.  I mean, here I am - sweaty faced, covered in frosting and flour, crap all over the kitchen walls and shoving a heavy cratered brown thing towards his face.  I'd be scared too.

He took a bite. And kind of nodded his head very politely without saying anything. "Hmm..."

In a dramatic breakdown inspired by Winona Ryder in Great Balls Of Fire, I tumbled to the floor and started crying and howling:  "I'M A TERRIBLE WIFE", "I CAN'T EVEN MAKE CUPCAKES!" , "I'LL NEVER BAKE AGAIN!" "I'VE RUINED YOUR BIRTHDAY", "NOW  NO ONE WILL HAVE CAKE", "WE NEED TO CANCEL THE PARTY!" so on and so forth. 

Mike hugged me... kind of panicked because he didn't know how to handle his brand new clinically insane wife, but also kind of laughing as he assured me things would be ok and that the cupcakes did not matter.  I'm glad he laughed... because even if it made me want to punch him in the stomach a little, it made me relax.  He really wasn't all that disappointed in my lack of cupcake making skills and he promised I didn't even have to clean the kitchen.

He knows how to solve problems.

I still felt like a total dill though.  Because I had spent the afternoon making a mess and then crying on the kitchen floor, it was almost time for the party and I had to get dressed.  Mike ended up having to go down to the grocery store and pick up his OWN birthday cake and ask them to write his OWN birthday message on it and because I was so traumatized by the sight of the cupcake disaster area I couldn't even go into the kitchen to clean up my own mess so he really did have to clean the kitchen... ON HIS BIRTHDAY!!!  I was useless. What the heck was wrong with me?

I have never baked a cupcake since.

As I'm working on Mike's 30th Birthday party now (he'll finally get his own non-Halloween themed party!) I've been tempted to give it another go since there are some really cute Star Wars themed cupcakes out there that would just be too expensive to have custom ordered and seem simple enough for me to make on my own.

As I begin this process, I reflect on the reason I haven't made cupcakes in the last 3 years and I wonder if I should even go there again. I've been convinced that it can be done. There are some things I've learned:

1. Don't bake the day-of.

2. Ask friends for help.

3. There is no shame in the Betty Crocker box mix and matching frosting.  I'll scarf down a funfetti cupcake any day of the week and naysayers are welcome to make my cakes for me.

Also... and this is the big one... I'll have a back up plan this time.

Internet Armageddon

Sometime in 1994, my family got our first family computer that was capable of accessing the internet... by 1995 (after daily pleading) my brother and I had convinced my parents to sign up and pay for the AOL service that came with that computer so we could actually go online.  I remember setting up the account with my dad and picking a main screen name for our main account and e-mail addresses - one that I still use a variation of today - and attempting to log on for that very first time.  The modem used to dial-up connect was loud enough to wake the neighbors and once you finally got online each page would take FOREVER to load.  Our home line would be busy for hours while we were online and the monthly subscription to AOL was not cheap at the time - but my mom seemed to understand that we'd need to know how to use the internet in the coming years, so she pushed to keep it (and later threaten to take it away when we didn't do what we were told.) 

The internet looked ugly. The AOL program itself was simple enough, but actual internet pages were slow, overloaded with awkward text, limited colors and questionable information.  Chat rooms moved quickly and instant messenger became the most fun reason to go online when you're 12 years old.  You could chat with other people around the country about all sort of stupid crap and see what other stupid people were doing and talking about.  Rooms were broken down by a number of categories - age, interests, subject, sex, etc. and my brother and I knew that while the internet was AWESOME, the internet was also dangerous.  We learned quickly (and my parents reminded us regularly) of what information we should never give out.  If we were sitting there using a fake persona, lying about our age and where we lived, we had to assume almost everyone else was doing the same. We figured out what websites we could and should not click to visit without a net nanny or child-safety options.  We learned by making some mistakes and more often, through information gleaned from other user's mistakes. 

By the time my brother and I were in high school, the internet had developed exponentially and we had grown with it.  We entertained ourselves by anonymously playing pranks on other weirdo users. We had an arsenal of fake screen names and a few scanned photos of teenaged girls from photo frames which we used for our pranks. One of our favorites was on a guy who admitted to having a foot fetish in one of the chat rooms. We just HAD to send him a private message with our super cute photo and of course, he took the bait.  We chatted about some stupid nonsense for a few minutes and then he asked for a photo of her feet.  My brother has big hairy feet - and I think he had some kind of injury on his toes at the time, so his feet looked DISGUSTING (and obviously perfect for the request) so, we snapped a couple photos with our brand new webcam and sent it over.  The guy's reaction to our photos was an immediate "THAT'S DISGUSTING!  What is WRONG WITH YOU!" and "IS THAT A GROWTH!?"  Our teenage pranks left us laughing for days and every time we’d end up berating the user for being an internet perv and hitting on high school kids.  We were essentially the precursor of “To Catch A Predator” – except we thought we were funny.  Eventually we became bored with chat rooms, my brother delved into the world of MMORPGs and message boards and I leaned into the world of blogging and Geocities (helping to make the internet uglier one page at a time!)

So.  Why is it that after having a steady, cautious and loving relationship with internet for 14 years, I HAD MY FIRST MAJOR FAIL YESTERDAY?! 

I was attacked by malware.

On my work computer.

And I couldn't fix it.

It's more embarrassing than anything else.  I felt like such a newb.  I know better than to open weird files, click strange links, or get a free iPad for anything... but sometimes you just get drive-by-installed and boom, you're screwed.  The one I got was the "AV Security Virus"  which looks EXACTLY like the Windows Security Center - shield and all. (Quick PSA: don't risk clicking any links for anything called "AV Security" anything.  They have malicious links that show up as a top search result in search engines and will seriously harm your computer if you click them, so only read about it from a website you already know and trust.) So when a little pop up notification came up from my taskbar saying that "Windows has detected a threat on this page" and giving me the option to stop the threat and run a scan, I brainlessly clicked yes. Within minutes, my computer was going insane.  

Duh. I should have known better.  I was on GOOGLE.  Not some crazy website. The insanity wouldn't stop once I clicked to acknowledge the annoying sucker.  It prevented me from being able to run task manager, open web pages, and do pretty much anything - including turning off my computer using a normal shut down.

I had lost. 

There were red pages popping up, warnings for every click I made, fake security scans and now every pop up was telling me it could all be stopped if I would just buy the full price version of the AV Security Suite, which roughly translates to: let me steal your credit card number ya dummy. 

I'm lucky it wasn't one of those password stealing spyware hacks or a data destroying worm, but still.  My face was red as I apologized profusely to our IT guy while he took away my old computer and replaced it (with a faster, quieter one - silver lining!) He assured me that it happens to the best of us and that it has happened before in the office.  I was still embarrassed.  And, for the first time ever, I was kind of afraid of the internet. 
 

Just to be safe, I went through and changed all my passwords for everything - which I had just done about a week before.  I had to come up with new, super secure passwords, which incidentally, is becoming very difficult.  Coming up with new passwords that I can a) easily remember and b) have all the crap that super secure passwords have (with numbers, symbols and text) is next to impossible at this point.     It took me about 20 minutes to think of something I know I'd remember.  And by the time I got home - I HAD FORGOTTEN what I was pretty sure I could remember.  

Luckily I wrote myself a cryptic code to help myself remember in case I accidentally forgot, right? Yeah, except it took me another 20 minutes to figure out what my cryptic note meant.  I read about creating a new secure password easily by using a mnemonic device to remember them - such as: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Me Nine Pizzas would be: MVEMJSM9P. Which on the surface looks AWESOME, but it turns out, that's only a semi-secure password!  You need a symbol in there too!  HOW DO YOU REMEMBER WHERE YOU PUT THE SYMBOL?!  And then I have to think up 40 new AND different passwords for all the websites I visit regularly?  AND REMEMBER ALL THAT?  Arg.

Maybe it's time for me to move into a cave. 

A warm cave.  With cable TV, an ocean view and a Tempurpedic bed.

On the internet.

Yah.

Shake, Rattle & Roll

Ahh, what a lovely day... perfect for a quick lunch-time blog...

I'm a native Southern Californian, which means that when I was born, the doctor checked my vitals, informed me that "The Big One" would strike at any minute and that I should be prepared to duck and cover. What only made it worse, was that "any minute" in geological terms meant the next 30 to 70 years which is exactly the time frame I would need to be panicked about the impending destruction for my ENTIRE LIFE (granted, I was an easily stressed out kid... floods, tornadoes, smallpox, fires, necrotizing fasciitis, the LA riots, cannibalism, super volcanoes ... I was pretty sure I was going to fall victim to everything I ever accidentally watched on the news.)

It was a given, that at some point we would either be floating off the coast of the USA as a brand new vacation destination called Californisland, or I would suddenly become a resident in a lovely post-apocalyptic beachfront community.  When I was little, I remember more than one earthquake striking while we were watching the Flintstones.  To this day, I harbor some resentment for Fred and Barney. Obviously they caused the earth to shake.  It's the same resentment I harbor towards the other animated earthquake inducing fiend, Ricky The Raindrop, better known as Ricky, The Harbinger of Doom.

  

And oh, the aftershocks.
 

As an adult, I'm not as panicked about your run of the mill, every day earthquake anymore.  In fact, I like the little ones because they aren't The Big One.   I'll still haul ass to find the nearest doorway or crouch under a sturdy desk.  I keep a flashlight and sturdy shoes near my bed and plan out my quickest route to an emergency exit wherever I go... but I'm not panicked about the thought of The Big One hitting any minute the way I was when I was a kid.

That said, there are definitely some places I hope to NOT find myself when The Big One finally decides to let us move on with our lives. San Andreas Fault... please work with me on these.

1) The Bathroom.

In the shower or on the toilet, I do not want to be in the bathroom.  Inevitably you'll either be nekkid or you risk some questionable toilet backsplash. Lose-Lose.

2) At the Dentist 

As if I really needed another reason to enforce my phobia. And this extends to any sort of procedure involving sharp instruments.

3) At SD ComicCon

100,000 nerds, cramped into 61,000 square feet of convention space.  Wearing costumes.  In July.  And, I might lose my spot in line.

4) At An Amusement Park

Especially not on Knott's Ghost Rider.  Because I'm pretty sure it's just an elaborate toothpick constructed rollercoaster.

5) Driving on a Stack Interchange

Or up the road to Big Bear.  Or anywhere not flat.  Or anywhere where there are cars or other things.

6) The Pacific Northwest

Because their Big One is supposedly going to be way bigger than our Big One.

7) The Inland Empire

Because if I thought traffic was bad before, it will only be worse trying to get home after the 91 disintegrates.

8) SLO and SFO

Because their buildings are so old that they actually put metal plates on the sides saying "Dude, this building is definitely going to crumble and hurl bricks in an earthquake, so walk by it at your own risk because The Big One will strike at any minute."

9) Yellowstone

Ok, so I'd just rather not be at Yellowstone ever.  That whole place is going to blow and it ain't gonna be pretty...  I think I'd take The Big One over The Big KABLOOEY any day.  Our trip to Iceland later this year will be peppered with some hefty kablooeys, but even Laki's worst features are nasty ash and flooding... not having an entire state EXPLODE.

10) The Zoo

Two words.  Escaped Gorillas.

 

Now, my top 5 choices for where I would like to be when The Big One hits:

1) On an airplane with all my friends and family and our pets on our way to a two week vacation in Switzerland.

2) In outer space

3) Sleeping in an Earthquake proof bunker.

4) In the middle of an open field with no power lines, trees, rocks or bugs.

5) At home.  Because I know where the snacks are.

And lastly, I leave you all with some helpful survival information for when the next Big, Medium, or Little One hits.

What To Do During An Earthquake

The Triangle of Life