interior grumblings

Beset by language puns. And no, this isn't to do with deadlines and wordcount (though frankly those aren't coming together as tidily as they ought), but with physical stuff.
Besides my arthritis, which is properly Palindromic Rheumatism, I was diagnosed some years back with irritable bowel syndrome, for which I prefer the alternative name of Spastic Colon (because it sounds like a punctuation error). Back when I got the diagnosis, along with the cheerful news that it could be more painful than appendicitis, there wasn't much information about how to deal with or avoid episodes. I think hot baths were recommended, and stress was to be avoided.
Fortunately I never encountered the 'worse than appendicitis' level, and for some years I'd nearly forgotten I had it. Until recently, when I had a stomach-ache for two weeks, which eventually reached the doubling-up-in-pain stage.
Again fortunately, now there is the internet, with lots of info about any kind of ailment you can imagine. So, armed only with a laptop and my finely-honed critical faculties, I set out to discover why me, now?
Conclusion: guess I shouldn't have tried to be healthy by having yogurt and granola for breakfast those two weeks.

For the next two weeks, I tried to be nice to my gut, and ease it back to its usual quiescent state. This meant pretending to be lactose, fructose and gluten-intolerant. Also to avoid fat, caffeine, chocolate, and alcohol. Yes to rice, oatmeal, barley, applesauce, soy, and (fortunately) sourdough bread.
Dropping chocolate and coffee, not so hard. Since I don't drink carbonated drinks or use artificial sweeteners, I didn't even have to drop them.
But cheese? Oh gosh I miss cheese. I want a nice big chunk of cheddar.
Which may be why we (who barely see one movie a year) went out and watched John Carter (of Mars) and Cabin in the Woods. Because if those movies aren't both big chunks of cheddar, I don't know what they are.
I enjoyed the heck out of both of them.

Wordcount is slower than I'd like, but I'm happy that I've moved past the twitchy self-doubt stage and am getting a better and fuller sense of the modern-day characters and the progress of events, with a couple of developments that surprised me (always good when that happens).
I am wondering--possibly as a result of Cabin in the Woods--whether the modern storyline is going to be too light compared to the kinda-grim 1600s plot. At present I'm not seeing any casualties among the sympathetic characters, even though my agent suggested that the mentor-ish character should die in the kaiju big battel scene at the end. Which may still happen, I'm just not finding inevitability in it so far.
Also, need to work on making the troubled teen come across more angry and destructive. Not outright disturbed, but aimless and impulsive.
Two things to write on post-its and put at my desk:
INTENSIFY!
WRITE SOMETHING NOW. FIX IT LATER.