Pins and needles

    Recently, as I've mentioned, I went largely vegetarian for a little while to try to get my gall bladder a little bit happier with me. And this went pretty well, well enough that I now accept that if I had to (or really wanted to) I could go vegetarian pretty easily. There was one trip in the Way Back Machine that I could have lived without, though.
    One of the things that eventually led me to conclude that I'm celiac was the wandering neuropathy (or if you prefer, pins and needles) that I had all the time from about the time I was 30 until I quit gluten at 45. It comes from a B12 deficiency. In the case of celiacs, the deficiency is created because the part of the intestine that is supposed to absorb B12 is the part that is damaged by celiac disease. For vegetarians, it's caused by the fact that B12 is practically not found in the vegetable kingdom.
    The other night, I was revisited by my old pal, wandering neuropathy. Easy to solve, of course; just take a supplement. As the B vitamins are water-soluble, it's impossible to overdose; you just pee the excess out. So Vegetarian John would just have to train himself to take the supplement every day. I seem to have mastered the kelp tablet with breakfast, so I'm sure I could manage a B complex tablet as well. Beats pins and needles any day!
    Night before last my dream was so alarming I didn't even want to write about it. I was hanging out with these unknown and imaginary guys on the upper level of a two-level shopping mall when one of them killed somebody. With his bare hands. Then another of the guys got mad at the first murderer and killed HIM, also with his bare hands. And I... I went off to read a book while the police dealt with it. I got stuck on the lower level, and was really trying to get back up to the upper level to help out, but was blocked at every turn. Cell phone service was useless, too. I dunno; I kind of preferred the more normal "I've got final exams and I never studied!" kind of nightmare on the whole.