My own "You know you have Celiac Disease if..." list

Here is a list I just wrote “You know you have Celiac Disease if….” It is my original work based on my personal experience, but the idea for the list came from postings on other sites. Thanks to the others who have written these lists and links to them can be found in my true and funny section on this blog (some contain duplicate items). I would love to thank the originator of these lists, but I am not sure who that is. I would love to hear your comments and additions! I hope you enjoy it!

You know you have Celiac Disease if:
1. You wish you had amnesia so you could forget what regular gluten food tastes like.
2. You bring your own cereal to eat for dinner at a wedding.
3. You worst nightmare is a long power outage and starving because all your food has spoiled.
4. You wish you could buy more generic items and that stores would stop replacing the brands you can eat with their own.
5. When house hunting, your most important criteria is close proximity to the stores that sell your staple foods.
6. You wish you could live by P.F. Chang’s, so you can actually have Chinese takeout.
7. At your job, the most important benefit is where you can go for lunch.
8. The highlight of your week is finding gluten free foods on sale at Whole Foods.
9. The highlight of your month is discovering a great new gluten free food.
10. You are ecstatic to see that your neighborhood grocery store now carries one of your favorite gluten free snack bars. Then you go to your specialty organic store and are devastated to see the store discontinued your other favorite snack bar.
11. Your greatest risk of cross contamination is accidentally buying the gluten product that is next to the gluten free one on the store shelf.
12. You panic when you see the cashier or the person in front of you at the checkout eating cookies.
13. You think your waiter finally understands your gluten free order and then he brings you a loaf of bread.
14. You ask at a fast food place for them to change their gloves, use new tongs, and clean the grill before cooking your order and they give you a blank stare like you are speaking a foreign language.
15. You dream of eating egg rolls and pizza and having no reaction.
16. When others offer to cook for you, you say, “No thanks, it has been __days since I have been glutened.”
17. You actually contact your local board of elections and ask “Does the provisional ballot envelope have to be licked sealed or is it self-stick? Can someone else lick it for me?” You will never again to forget to update your address with them when you move.*
18. You are content sitting in a mall eatery when you have a stuffy nose.
19. Your young non-Celiac child wants to open a gluten free restaurant when she grows up and explains to strangers what gluten is and recites a list of foods mommy can’t eat.
20. You believe the most important invention was Foods by George English Muffins!

*Envelope glue does not contain gluten. This is a myth based on old information.