I have Cancer!  When you say it…The first thing everyone says is did a Dr tell you that or did you tell you that?!!!

Today is the first time ANYONE CONFIRMED WHAT I KNEW. And it wasn’t the Doctors. 

My oncology Doctors Nurse said “they don’t know where the cancer originated from””.  “That it’s extreamy important to know that before you start treatment for the best outcomes.

Why the hell do they refuse to share it with me?  It feels like a theft of sorts that I cooperate in these tests to get answers and they hold back the information.

I get access to my results…but only some of them.  The exrays and scans that give them a chance to actually see what is  going on with my body, no one gives me access to those.  Noone has told me what they see!

They keep saying they don’t know for sure its cancer…but their faces don’t lie.  If your going to bullshit me you can’t  have that sadness.  That pulling away.  Tears in your eyes!

You think your giving me hope or time  but what your actually doing is making me feel crazy! 

Telling me that I can’t trust my own instincts.  Your stealing time that I could spend making REAL plans for how we can best spend the time I have left.

I fought “crazy” all my life an I will not allow all the work I have done to mean nothing now.  Give me my truth!  Just read the results and let me and my family deal with what IS!

Cancer is a roller coaster

and can’t get off.  I never liked roller coasters.

I work hard to advocate for what I want and think I have it and then it’s gone. 

I worked very hard to set everything up.   The correct Dr the first time.  The right treatment center for our needs.  The soonest possible appointments.

One simple test result and everything is on hold while we add a bunch of new appointments. 

My surgery dates just been canceled.  New one having to be based on a whole new set of complications that make it take so much longer.

I AM A TIME BOMB.  I don’t know how much of it I have but constantly being shown that it’s short.

So now my new plan.  Assess my needs.  Express those needs.  Expect that people are taking those into account.  Let go of the actual outcome. 

Find the flow.  Move with it.
I have just been given more time on the before end.   Try to see it as a good thing.

More time while I am not having to deal with what ever dealing with cancer will mean.

More time to simplify our lives so that in the aftermath of what is happening, we can
Have room to breathe.

I hurt and have been giving into it.  I make it an excuse to take the time off from the things that I need to do, and NOT DO anything.

I need to prepare.  Our lives need pared down as quick as possible to something I can manage.

That’s not done by thinking about it…it’s done by DOING IT.

First we pray.  It helps me prioritize needs, think and breathe.  I put the energy of what I want out there where I can get the help available to me.

Make the lists.  Take the Tylenol.   Drink the energy drink.  Do the work.  Revise as necessary.

Cancer

I try again and again to work things out and something else comes up.  I have too much to do to keep riding this roller coaster.

People around me keep giving me another route for denial. It could be something else. It could be this.

Today that ends. A few numbers on a page and all possible outcomes are simplified…it’s Cancer and its spread.

Did the Doctor say that? NO! The numbers on my lab test do. Normal is 2.5 in people that don’t smoke. 5 in people that do.

One test result for cancer shows 48. Another shows 47.5. Several others read normal. It takes days to read these tests but no one discusses it with me.

They get xrays and scans and no one gives me any idea what they see. When I say something to the Dr she says, “we still don’t know.”

I am getting more and more angry. Those numbers are high. Thats not nothing. Thats not …maybe its cancer numbers.

Thats its some sort of cancer is floating around in my blood and its not only there but it’s spread, but that not what they say.

They tell me nothing! The lab test say maybe colon…maybe ovarian…possibly lung…all those markers are floating around in there.

But they take scans that I don’t get to see. The numbers of them is mounting up but no one tells me what they say.

My symptoms say Ovarian, possibly starting somewhere else. Possibly my fallopian tubes, possibly my colon.

I go to the Doctor to give me those answers and answers are the one thing I don’t get.

What I get is a treatment plan. What is it? For 30 days we wait. When EVERY THING I KNOW ABOUT CANCER SAYS TIME IS IMPORTANT. They say we must wait.

Don’t worry they have a pill for that. Antibiotics. Clear up your infection that’s complicated our diagnosis process and come back in a month.

I am not a stranger to this feeling.

That there is no REAL life insurance.

We roll along in our lives believing that we can strengthen the walls around us. That if we do a good enough job we can provide ourselves with the protection we need to keep us from harm.

I truly believe that this is the one flaw in the nature of human beings that allows us to draw a line between ourselves and others and judge them.

It only takes one second in time to change that belief to knowledge. Knowledge once learned can’t ever be unlearned.

I am in the hospital. They took a scan and found something, “maybe fibroids” That was definitely not there in my scans from 2 months ago.

The Doctor ordered up an ultrasound. Two hours later returned no longer informal…not unkind but curt and professional. “There is definitely a mass there. Not all masses are a problem. I will give you a referral. Call them Monday . They are going to want to do a biopsy and if they can’t get you in right away, hang up. Call someone else. You can’t let this wait.” Then he was gone.

Life insurance is not something that you buy for yourself. You buy it for those you love.

It’s something that I have never done. Purchasing a policy, “is betting against yourself “. Can I die quick enough to make it a good deal?

Some might believe that today was a good day to make that bet, but in my heart I know no amount of money will blanket the ones I love nor provide them the protection that I want.

I have perfected the art of surrounding myself with only the people who are able to love me the way I want to be loved.

If you live your life this way, you will have a very good life. I do. I have the most perfect wonderful life ever. Because I have not always had this life, I know that cancer is a gift!

I have been around the sick and dying most all of my life and have always believed it to be so. Life becomes precious. You are given a magic power. You can ask anything you want from anyone and they will give it.

My sister in law had cancer and I can’t remember exactly her words…but it was in line with ‘I wasn’t given much in this life but I was given the cancer stick and I will wield it!’ She was the known as the Bon Bon Queen and was bigger than life.

Everyone who met her wanted to give her things! She would laugh and swear she didn’t understand it.

She kept a suitcase by the door always packed because when people went anywhere they wanted to take her with. She was wonderful and magical…every moment was better with her in it.

She didn’t need cancer for that to happen, but maybe I did. There are days that I am a grumpy ass…to the point of when we first got the children, I took a pill for that!

No one deserves to have THAT PERSON in their lives. I quit taking those in December as I feel so blessed most of the time that I wanted not to be on medication for anything anymore.

I have healed and laid aside all the pain of the past, and I am here and present. I can see it in those around me. They are happy. I am allowed to be happy

I mean this in the most selfish way possible, let me be like her. Let me remember the needs of those I love and not let this over take all the moments of my life in a way that makes them less important.

Let me embrace the days and enjoy them. Let us be able to still embrace good moments. Let me be a blessing and a joy to be around.

AMEN

He was known as “Your Homeless Friend Khi”.

Khi had Fredrick’s ataxia for over a decade and he had been told years ago that his heart was giving out and he was dying.

He through himself into his homeless advocacy making a plan to change the laws federally to give the homeless a bill of rights.

He stayed in Washington knocking on doors constantly till representatives from all 50 states were directly told about the plight of people on the streets and what he felt needed to be done.

He continued to travel around talking to people until he felt a noticeable change in his muscle control. He felt he was close to dying and moved in with friends in Hawaii and waited to die.

Months passed and he began to get angry that he hadn’t died. He felt people thought he was a fraud and when he wasn’t dying fast enough, he through himself back into living…back on the streets where he wasn’t a burden to anyone.

He became a blogger. He wrote about his life and tried to give homeless people a feeling of dignity and hope, even when the loss of motor control and constant pain made him feel like giving up himself, he was passionate about helping anyone and doing anything he could.

If a creature needed looked after, he took it in. If you didn’t have money and needed help he did anything he could to help you. To earn a living he kept trying one business idea after another, doing his best to support himself, when almost everyone considered his disability a liability that they couldn’t take on.

Khi was my oldest son. He died November 1st, 2020.

What you do defines you.

In that way my art terrifies me. “You will never make a living as an artist. Learn to write. Writers make good money.” Our “father” tried to teach me. But the lessons I learned were not the one’s I think he intended. I Always wanted to be an Artist: I did learn to write fairly well but I have never earned a dime with either thing.

With a belt in his hand he taught me to sweep and make the bed, and I became good enough at that to make a living. I am a maid, a housekeeper, a caregiver. I am 60 and too old to be redefining who I am. Maybe.

We were raised by people not related to us by blood. Not “Adopted”; Handed off like puppies. Decades ago I went looking for our “REAL family” and found them. On our Grandfathers side of the family were the Truckers. Generations of them going as far back as there were Trucks.

Grandma had pictures of the first. He delivered water. He stood beside his truck with one foot up on the bumper and his hat in his hand. Iconic shot. Before we ever knew any of this My brother became a Trucker and works long hours driving to earn his living, to this day.

But on Grandmothers side were the Artists. John C Vasquez was an artist, who made a good living for his family painting portraits for notable people of their time. Mayors and Governors and such. Without ever knowing this, I always felt born to draw. How strange the genes that link us to our past: but I was a maid.

I cleaned for someone who made her living as an artist. As I watched her paint, I told her I wished I could do what she did. Have you tried? “I draw, I don’t paint.” “Ok, ears are the hardest thing I know to draw. Draw an ear.”

The next time I returned to clean I brought my drawing. Several ears on a scrap of sketch paper. She pulled out a partially finished canvas and gave it to me saying “Don’t tell me you can’t paint till you have painted a mile of canvas. You can make this one your first.”

From that moment on people that love me have fed that need. They have been buying me canvas’s and paint and excepting my paintings as gifts till no one had room for anymore…even still My Daughter will try to claim them.

For the most part I have painted over and over the canvas’s I already have. It’s been over a decade and I am beginning to get a feel for my own way of doing what I do. I have started doing paintings for people I don’t know by request as gifts through our Facebook pages and got a couple of requests from people who said they liked my work.

This week I had told someone I would have a gift ready for her to give her Mother, but I have been depressed and the harder I tried to get it the worse it became. I couldn’t do it. The time for pick up was coming fast and I had crap.

I apologized and told her I couldn’t do it, “that my head was just not in the right space.” Weird enough, when she was kind and gave me leave. I sat down and started on fresh canvas and pulled off something I would sign my name to. It was done in time for her to pick up and I wrapped it up with a new feeling about myself.

In my mind I had crossed a bar. This was not me painting from my heart. This was me painting what someone else wanted, with a deadline, and I did it. I wrapped up the gift, left it on the porch for pick up, and Thanked her for her gift to me. My new Identity.

The twins…my new reality.

These two humans fell into my life and have changed everything about it. We are still becoming a family, and yet are unsure what it looks like for us for so many reasons.

They still have parents. Parents who are randomly involved and most often missing from their lives so that we have to deal with them, but they seem not to contribute in many meaningful ways. No child support. Not acknowledging them on their birthday.

Often the kids write to them and receive no answer. They rarely call and often when they do only speak of themselves. I often wonder if I should keep encouraging them to reach out.

I am a month from 60 and worry about that. They may need parents longer than I may be here to help them. I keep hoping that if they know how much the children love them they will be motivated to get it together so that they can have a relationship someday.

They had so many problems that I have felt at times overwhelmed and like it was best to let them go to someone better able to deal with all they have been through…but still we hang in there and keep trying to make this work thinking that to let them go would just add to the number of adults that have failed or abandoned them.

They don’t do well with structure and rules and at 12 are already talking about quitting school. The fact is they don’t fit in there. These people with rolls that make them want to “whip them into shape” readying them for High School and a life of kissing ass to get by, have no room in their tight running little school for anyone that doesn’t fall in line and show the proper respect.

Seriously! Where is there “RESPECT” for these human beings who have survived the last few years of chaos, only to be ripped away from the only home they have ever known and everything and everyone they loved.

Now they are 12, at a new School, living far away from the people who knew and respected them, and I am up at that Jr High every week, trying to get the people running the school to understand why they refuse now to let people treat them like children.

They are trying to funnel these kids into the bad kid school, because they refuse to say “yes sir!” burp in class, and refuse to stop wearing their hoodie! I won’t have it!

I got hired on at Publix but they want me to work all nights and weekends and that isn’t possible with these two. For now I am homeschooling Cassie, while trying to pick up enough cleaning jobs to keep me in enough money for allowance and bills so that I can have the free time to get them to therapy appointments and give them all the extra attention they need.

Pray for us.

How many hippies can you get in a van going south to the next gathering?

The punch line is ONE MORE AND A DOG…it doesn’t matter how many are already in it…you can always fit in one more and a dog!

We have told this joke a lot in our family because both my Mother and I have an affinity for taking in strays. How many people can you fit in our homes…it’s usually one more and a cat. When I was in my teens, my Mother would say, there’s always room for one more, and she meant it. I am happy to say it’s one of the gifts she did pass on to me.

About 14 years ago when Karen ended up on the streets with a drug habit, Mom took her in and when she found out she was pregnant, as usual she said “there’s always room for one more.” We all about fainted when we heard that she was pregnant with twins!

I also landed with Mom for quite a spell during this time and we had truly a full house. When she gave birth everyone was there and for quite some time the kids hardly ever touched the floor as there were many hands to help feed and care for them.

Mom and Karen didn’t always agree and since Mom had a home and Karen didn’t, when Karen moved out and wanted to take her children with, Mom fought her and won. Karen didn’t want her babies on the streets with her and didn’t fight too hard knowing they were loved and taken care of.

This is how “the twins” ended up as my little sister and brother. Till they were almost 4 I was a big part of their everyday lives. Mom and I disagreed about their care and Mom had her home and I didn’t so she won again. That’s how she ended up a full time, hands on, single parent at the age of 70.

The last few years she has lost her ability to care for them as dementia has set in and while she fought a fierce battle to keep them, she just wasn’t able to care for them any longer.

We thought for a time Child welfare would just intervene and remove them from her care as they weren’t actually related to her but they recognized that OUR family was their family, and left it up to us to jump in and make a plan for them, and we have.

Kevin and I have just become parents to twelve year old twins! They need so much! Everything they had barely fit into two carry-ons for the trip here. My baby is 35 now and Kevin has never had children so we were more than a bit worried about jumping in here but now it’s done.

Wish us luck!

The family is the single most important influence in our lives.

All throughout our lives, we will need to depend on others to protect us and provide for our needs. The Family unit is the most dependable way we have of securing that in our society.

“Family” is a support system that stabilizes our ability to provide for our own needs. To have a Family means you have security; people who you can count on who share your problems, but it also means mutual responsibility for the welfare of all the others in that group.

From their first moments of life, children depend on parents and family to protect them and provide for their needs, but we will never outgrow our need for family. By linking our survival with the survival of others, we best ensure that our needs are always taken care of.

A family is a contract made with imperfect people. Sometimes we fail to fulfill our part of the bargain, but it doesn’t negate the contract. Our strength as a family unit is that we are bound by that contract as) a whole. When someone drops the ball on their obligations, someone else picks it up.

Everyone in our family unit has at one time or another contributed to my own health and welfare and I am equally bound to each and everyone in our group to do whatever I am capable of, to contribute to theirs.

Growing up Bob and I were very aware of the fragile nature of our “family”. The family we had just passed us off to someone else, and this new family bailed in their obligation to us, just as the old one had. We, in turn, built our own family’s and are both proud to claim and enjoy the benefits of what we have built.

I chose long ago to add members of both of the family’s of our origin, to the family I built for myself. Giving myself a larger family base gave me more strength and stability, and everyone who knows me, KNOWS I NEEDED IT.

For whatever reasons, for a good part of my life, I have been dependent on others to step up and help me and my children, and they have. I have reaped the benefits of belonging to the family I built.

Those I am closest to, know that I am about to expand my family again by marrying Kevin. I am so happy that everyone has embraced him so fully and have grown to love him as I do.

Recently I made another decision and asked the family to step forward with that same level of support, and am finding that my support system is faltering in its ability to give that to me.

Almost 12 years ago, our original mother took responsibility for twins that were not at all blood related to our family.  I long ago made her and those children a part of my “family”.

For all the members of this family who have chosen not to add ALL the members of MY FAMILY to their own, I honor that decision. There is no judgment in me for that.

Now she and those children NEED someone to step up. It is true that none of us are in the perfect situation to do so. Their needs are overwhelming.

For some time now the only person close enough to help, has been already way overburdened by their own circumstances and commitments.

We have allowed her to take this on while all of us have been waiting and watching hoping beyond hope that the situation would conclude without anyone else needing to be inconvenienced.

Kevin and I are in agreement that by bringing Mom and the kids here we might be endangering what we have here, so I have chosen to go there. We have put our marriage and our life on hold while we look closer at the situation. No other decisions have been made, except this one.

We love and are committed to each other and we are asking that you continue to support us as a family unit as we go through this.

Learning to swim

My father taught me to swim.  He tossed me into the deep end of my Aunt’s pool and walked away.  I was fine.  Getting out of that pool was frightening and exhausting, but once I had done it, the knowledge that I could never left me.  I have never been afraid of water and love swimming and feel that everyone should know how wonderful it is to move through the water and enjoy it as I do.

My father taught my brother to swim.  He tossed my brother in and walked away.  My brother wasn’t boyant like me … He didn’t float to the top like I did.  He sunk to the bottom like a rock.

After a few horrible moments of silence my father looked back to see him drowning instead and jumped in to fish him out.  He yelled at him for not trying to swim and tossed him in again.  I remember him tossing us in a lot.  He had the expectation that we would learn to swim and we did.    It took my brother longer to find his love of water but we both found it.

Get a job

I just dropped my son off at the airport after a very interesting conversation.  He spoke with anger about our President and how he has done nothing to help the poor.

His opinion is that we need to be lifting our population up from the bottom instead of doing more to boost the middle class.

My opinion was that anything done to help the middle class did help the poor.  He got angry and said that I believed in trickle down economics and trickle down doesn’t work.

The trickle down effect works, but only if you’re pouring it in close to those that have need of it.

There is so much anger and bitterness…and I can see where it comes from but I see no need for it.

The words “Get a job”, hurt him when he hears them, but he hears “get up off your lazy ass and work like the rest of us”…even when the intent is only to say “look my friend, the pathway to success starts with getting a job…once you’re on the path…you will find your way.”

This is the experience of many and there is as much validity in it as there is in my son’s belief that it’s not working for everyone.

Hello friends…

I haven’t been here in a long while. This was where I came to write because writing seemed to help me while I was healing and when I was in pain. Being on the planet was painful, this place made it less so.

At more than one point in my life I had to have a reason to exist or I couldn’t exist any longer and the answer I got then, was that I was here to learn to love more perfectly. That alone was reason enough for me to endure what I was going through, and now I am so glad that I have.

I haven’t felt the need to be here because I haven’t been in pain in a long while. Weirdly enough that in itself has become my reason to come here.

For weeks I have been helping my Aunt get resettled in a new place. One of her needs has been to find a home church, so every week I have been attending a different church with her. So far we have gone to 6 churches and have for one reason or another found them all lacking something she feels like should be there.

I haven’t attended church for over a decade myself because I didn’t want to be labeled a “Christian”. It was for a mixture of reasons and few of which I am proud to share but the main one is that I don’t want people looking too closely at me as a human being. I am very flawed, and it feels like “Christians” shouldn’t be.

I don’t know what my Aunt is looking for. I was just there to support her search, but a funny thing has happened to me and I can’t contain it anymore. I found the love of God. Each church we walked into I felt for it…thinking I have felt the love of God before when I was in Church, why not here? Have the churches died? Are we needing a revival to awaken the spirit of God in his people so that others can see it?

Yesterday at Church I found it. Not because we finally found the “perfect” Church that was flowing with Gods love but because suddenly it was in me. I have this feeling that I want to reach out to people who are hurting and comfort them. I care in a way that I haven’t been able to in a long time.

I don’t want to preach the Gospel or live my life differently, I just feel the need not to ignore the pain of others anymore. I want to ask…are you feeling the love of God today? and take some responsibility for making sure you do, and I am Grateful.

I found my answer. I was seeking the love of God…and he put it in my heart where I could feel it and know that it was true and real.

I am back here today to say when I searched for Healing, God provided. I Am Grateful. When I searched for love, God provided. I Am Grateful. I am living an abundant life today, and I am grateful.

I believe God speaks to us in voices that are unique to us. That He knows our needs, and provides for them in ways that are unique as well.

Don’t stop seeking what it is you need. Nothing is bigger than God can provide.

Panic Attack…

I was in traffic when it hit.  It felt like something physical… tremors in my heart and an ever growing physical discomfort till I couldn’t breathe.  It felt like it came from outside of me and I didn’t have control over my reaction.  That made it grow.  The feeling that every thing was fine and for no reason that I could control, suddenly NOT FINE, added a terror and a grief that easily overwhelmed me. 

I globalized it.  Worried that I shouldn’t be driving anymore.  Shouldn’t go anywhere alone.  That I couldn’t be trusted.  That at any moment that feeling could hit again and I could get THAT out of control frighted me.

That afternoon was shot.  I raved like a loon to people who cared.  They held my hand and wanted to take away the fear and that did.  Then when I calmed down, I pulled apart what happened.  

What started it?   What was I thinking?  Where did I feed into and help myself lose control?  Where could I take some control if it happened again?  From there came a plan.  Not a perfect formula to follow but tools added to try next time.  

Comfort is taken from the recognition that no matter how I felt, the feeling did pass.  First tool is time.  Recognize that it is a waiting game and I can do this.  I have done it.  Bleed off time.  Ignore the changes in my body.  The pounding in my chest, the changes in how much air I feel I get.  They didn’t really harm me.  I got enough air.  I didn’t pass out … nothing really bad happened.

Something about Harry Potter… That scene where the class takes the scary thing and makes it funny.  Try to find something humorous.  Break the grip fear had.  Tools for the next time.

Love resides here…

I am in the mist of this really good thing.  It is a world of enough.  Enough money, enough love, enough time, where bad things never happen.  Like some paralleled universe to my own and when I am in his arms I am so safe.  Everything is quiet and wonderful and the world was created to be enjoyed.

I had to fight back the fear that hit when I first went there.  It felt irrational to feel safe and scared.   Fear that I didn’t belong there and would never live in that world.   I get angry at my brain but I also appreciate it.  I don’t stay stuck too long.  I move on to being OK with who and where I am in my life.

It doesn’t matter if I don’t belong… for what ever reason I am here.  Life is good.  I have for this moment a respite if I take it.  A few days a week of visiting a foreign country and experiencing what the world might have been like had the dice rolled differently on the day I was born.

I take it knowing that the days may be numbered.  That it is just another thing to add to my experience bank.  I drink it in and steal back to my life which is abnormally good right now.  A world of sharing new baby’s, having my needs provided for and being appreciated.

For now we pass from one world to the other seamlessly without settling in.  We are, just for a time, observing.

Adapting to a new vision.

Last holiday season was a season of grief and loss and I needed time to process the changes.  I have been in the hospital again and this alone bought about loss.  For over 40 years I expected that I would someday figure out what was broken in me and fix it.

That someday I would be “normal” is a hard dream to let go of, but it has finally died.  Normal meant that I wouldn’t have my body shut down on me against my will because life was a bit more stressful than usual.

It also meant that I would trust my thinking process.  Longing  for the day that I not worry that it’s so flawed that I might do things that I would not be able to live with later.  This happened far too often because the part of my brain that kept track of my belief system would not be accessible.

I thought that I had finally achieved that when this current breakdown occurred.  It brought with it a new weary that wears on me long after the effects of the stresses I have had.

One that says I will NEVER be “well”.   I will never be able to tolerate what is a normal amount of stress for others.  I will never be able to live without my family’s watchful eye, telling me when I have strayed from what is usual for my behavior, so that I can seek out the help I need to get back to being able to function normally.

I am blessed that I have a loving family that keeps a watchful eye without needing to control me.  I know that it’s not always so.   I resist being maintained 24/7 on medication that Doctors have claimed that I could never function without.   Most of the time I function fine, but I realize under other circumstances their dire predictions might bear out as true.

So now the new vision.  One of me always dependent on those who love me, and as always, ever grateful for their gift in my life.

I have been in a bad space lately…

I realize that it’s guilt coming up and overwhelming me.   The thing is I am not an extraordinary person.  I am absolutely average.

I live everyday being as kind to others as I find possible and caring about the effect I have on them.  I don’t have a job, but I do work, and I look for work.  I don’t invest myself fully in the long distance relationships I have but my life is full and busy: Who does?

I’m married and date but my husband has been aware of it and we have lived apart for 6 years now…I signed the divorce papers, he just hasn’t filed them.

All the things that I have done that make me feel crappy, others do and I wouldn’t blink twice nor waste a moment judging.  Why does it devastate me when its ME doing it?

28th of January

First anniversary of your afterlife.  You tried to hang on: Not wanting to ruin everyone’s holidays.  It seems a disservice to everyone to morn, but for the most part I haven’t … and I promise that from here on I will only celebrate the fact you shared your life with me. Forgive me for not being able to do that this year..

Please forgive my absence…

I have been stuck in a pattern of destructive thinking trying not to pass that on.   I have been shutting down and it looks a lot like depression, but I have found it to be a necessary component of resetting my brain function.  Life is getting better, I will see you again soon.

Tell me how to put the Merry back in my Christmas…

I know that I once loved the holidays.  Now I am dragging myself through them.  I’m surrounded by people who love me and yet still feel isolated and alone.  I want to be happy but all I can muster is some anger over not living up to my own beliefs.  Just one more reason to hate myself and hate even more having to be alive.

I want to give from my heart to those I love but find nothing in there.  What does a person have left to give when even a request for pets from her sweet kitty is met with gritted teeth.

Crazy animal knows when I am needy.  She knows when I am ill.  I begrudging pet and put her down again and again wanting only to be left alone.  She knows this is the last thing I need and jumps back into my lap and curls up purring.

Funny cat.  When I feel my worst she refuses to leave me.  Her heart pressed against mine.

May you all have some kitty to love you this Christmas.

Homelessness…

I ran away.  That day I left, 3-3-’75  still being remembered and celebrated as my independance day.   Thus began my life of recurring homelessness.   In those years, even after being raped 4 times while on the streets, I still believed it to have been the better option than staying in the home that had been provided for me.

I only tell you these things to let you know that as a 16 year old girl, this was how I survived, without selling drugs or becoming a prostitute.  Even when I got a job I could only pay a night or two in a cheap hotel on the small amount I earned working part time at fast food.

Most most nights I would hang out with other young people who lived in Hollywood.  We would kill a lot of hours back then by going to the bars before 8pm because they didn’t start carding anyone till then and we would stay till they closed around 2:30 am.

After that you just had to keep moving.  People would leave you alone if they thought you were going somewhere. Staying in one place wasn’t an really an option till I found that the bushes alongside the off-ramp to the Hollywood Bowl were thick enough to provide shelter.  Not comfort, or warmth but a place to sit where I wouldn’t be bothered.

Often I would hitch hike somewhere just to be inside, warm and comfortable in a car for a while.  Most often people who picked me up would buy me something to eat.  Most days I would be out early and walk to the restroom of a gas station near by.  After washing my clothing in the sink, I would wash my hair and body with soap from their dispenser and put my clothing back on wet.  Most days I would walk from there to the North Hollywood Library.  I was usually dry by the time I got to the park near by where I would wait for the library to open and provide safe sanctuary for me to sleep.

The librarian kept a watchful eye on me while I rested but never asked me to leave.   There were no fences or spikes to keep me from places that provided me with a place to sit and have some measure of safety in the night.  No one stopped me from using the bathroom in 1975.  I thought the world a hard place then and yet so much harder now.

It was a mistake!

It’s almost my moms birthday.  I have been looking over my old post trying to find some to send my mother to share the bond I feel with her one more time, and I found this. It was originally posted on  Jul 4, 2012 .  One of my first posts here and long ago lost in all I have written.

I had to post it again.  I don’t know that anyone but me would find it funny but it’s always worth sharing a laugh.   More than that it’s a wave at an old friend.  You are loved and missed and I am so sure you know that, as I can see you active in the lives of your baby girls.   Hugs and smooches my friend.

with love,

Sincerely, SB

****************************************************************************************************

I tried to bury the household pet turtle and it kicked off a late night of lying on the bed with our feet kicked up like school girls having a sleep over; chatting and laughing.  It was a mistake that my sister-in-law thought that she would never have made!

To start with the water smelled funny and had a suspicious film on it that I hadn’t seen before. Then I fed him twice and he hadn’t even lifted his head. In our family, I am the one that takes care of those kind of things so I went out back and dug him a hole.

I picked up the bowl and headed out, and it wasn’t until I had poured out almost all the water that he suddenly sprang to life!  And to think we were that close to having room for a cat!

Valerie has decided that we have to restrict his T.V. time due to the fact that he has either watched to many Geico commercials and was beginning to immitate the oppossum or we foiled a planned escape using the methods that he had learned watching finding Nemo.  Either way she was sure that the T.V. was a bad influence on him.

As long as we were on the subject of death and dying, (and if you think that’s a tad morbid you don’t know my sister-in-law) we spent awhile laughing over the coffin that she had picked out.  It was Purple!   She “found one much cheeper at Cosco but she couldn’t get it in the color she wanted” so we’re going to get it and completely cover it in faux purple gems and right across the face of it we’re putting Live, Love and Laugh.  Like her it will be an original!

Valerie fights hard for every moment she has here and is giving me lessons close up and hands on that it’s not really what happens to us, but our attitude about it that determines our level of happiness in this life.  Over that, we have complete control.

You have to find the roses; the thorns will always find you.

It’s been a while…

since I have been on here writing on a regular basis.  I have been working on another project and finally launched it.

I have a couple of insights that have come from this.  One is that if your going to do something big…Don’t tell anyone.  I have the most supportive family in the world but even they can say and do things that deter me from following through on things I truly feel are important.

Months back I wanted to bicycle across the country, and not doing it has me angry with myself.  I am still determined to do it only now I think that I will just jump out there and go when I am ready without any announcement or fanfare.  I don’t see them now: how would they know?

The other is don’t get discouraged when you work for months on an idea and then get it all together and launch it and no one notices.  Really!  A million people have already figured out that launching a business on the web doesn’t mean anyone will find you.

I have been on here for over a year and before I disappeared totally I had a little following but they came one or two at a time.  It takes time and work, so here I am devoting 18-20 hours a day to it.  Just when I begin to feel exhausted another thought of something I can do or need to do comes and I have to take care of it.  Thoughts escape unnoticed by anyone if you don’t capture them somehow.

Anyway I’m back.  Thank you for being here.

sincerely, SB

Dear Lucky,

There must be a million sellers on Ebay and you managed to get me!

For several years now I have been getting Ebay messages to my email box saying Sell your old junk “free” today!

Well I have been out of work and lots of times I have seen how people are running thriving businesses out of their homes on Ebay.

Well the other day I said hell … why not give it a try and I grabbed the closest thing to me and took some photos and posted them for sale.

Thank God that it was ONLY one item.

I managed to pick up some work out-of-town and jetted off never thinking of it again.

I got back home late Friday to find you had bought my wonderful item.

Congratulations!! YOU WON!!!!

Total payment $19.25!   Woooohooo!   I have done it.  I will ship this tomorrow and can just relax and collect my cash!

Saturday I tried wrapping this puppy up and found that it is an odd shape and size and doesn’t fit in anything I have … and my printer doesn’t work. CWAP!   Heck with it…I will mail it Monday.

Monday I run to W*****t and grab a box that looks good and go by the library to print a shipping label but the library isn’t open.

I get home and the box isn’t big enough … REALLY !!! it looked HUGE in the store but when you start folding it is amazing how small it is.

I am beginning to really hate myself for doing this…and honestly wondered if I could just give you $5.00, return your funds and swear NEVER TO DO THIS AGAIN and just make it all go away!

So Tuesday it is and 5 days after you paid.  DANG it!  I got up this morning determined that you were going to get your package.

I looked at every box I have and found one that I could deconstruct duck tape to hell and back to keep it structurally sound, put what was in it in a clean garbage bag and wrapped away.   I jetted out to the post office  without the shipping label and FINALLY got it in the mail!

Success!!!  Oh by the way.  I estimated the size wrong the item Ebay said would ship for $5.00 just shipped for $14.05

I made a profit but I wonder if I have to pay sales tax????

I think I was trying to put a whole years learning curve in on my first sale but Thank You for taking a chance on me.

God Bless you for your patience and I truly do hope that you truly enjoy your new shelf!

Dating and cisgender/transgender issues

I am over 50 and dating and that has brought up some thoughts on things that I long ago stopped thinking about.  I can’t help but to look at prospective SO’s and consider how they view our gender identity and how we will mesh long-term.

I am far from being OK with guys who say “this is me not giving a f__k” when it comes to the inequity’s that keep woman held down, but feminist issues have stopped being a hot button for me.  Even close inspection barely reveals the feminist who used to dwell here.

The last guy I dated was amazing.  I met him on a dating site and we seemed to be a great match.  When we started talking he said “I am one of the first metro-sexual’s”.  For the first few dates that seemed wonderful.

We went to his place and it was spotless.  He didn’t just cook, he was a chef and he prepared meals for us with ingredients I hadn’t heard of till then.  He always looked polished and didn’t mind wearing a suit, even though jeans were more his style.

Being with him was easy.  Our days together flowed without conflict, but I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t commit to a long-term relationship with him because I realized that I didn’t feel necessary in the relationship.

Looking back I have the benefit of logic that was lost on me at the time.  I was an idiot.  He was with me because he wanted someone to share his life with and I was good at that but it wasn’t enough for me.  I felt so insecure that I couldn’t get comfortable.

Have you ever been in a relationship where they broke it off saying “it’s not you, its me” well maybe you can believe that when I tell you that is EXACTLY what I felt here.  Everything about him was wonderful.

For a year and a half now I have reflected on what was wrong with me!  I have felt undeserving of a relationship since because I felt that God gave me something really good and I tossed it aside like it was nothing.

I wish I could say ‘I have come a long way baby’ but what I realize is that as I have gotten older I have solidified my cisgender qualities.

In my 20’s I had gender issues that ranged from fears that my size kept me from being feminine enough to being blind furious that when ever I made enough money to survive, it put me in direct conflict with angry men who thought I had no right to compete with them for “jobs that could feed their families”.

I was 29 when I learned what it was like to dance.  Not that wiggly, independent, do what ever you feel to the music dancing; but the kind where he takes you across the floor and you know nothing about what your doing, but your doing it because he directs every move wordlessly with everything he does.

It is hard to be a feminist when what you want most is to feel that again.  To be able to follow blindly and trust that the result isn’t going to reflect that you had no idea where you were going: You won’t stumble and he won’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go.

Not long after that a friend said, “Let a man take care of you.  You know you can so you have nothing to prove, and it makes them feel good so let them do it”.  Between that and what I felt on the dance floor it changed everything I ever felt about gender roles and woman’s equality.

In the last 25 years I have molded myself into the woman who loves to clean house; takes pride in the fact that she can hand sew a stitch so perfect that it looks machined, loves the smell and feel of laundry just out of the dryer but wants her sheets line dried so her bed is “sunshine fresh”, and enjoys pressing perfect pleats into “permanent press” clothing.

After over a year of hard contemplation I realize that’s less about who I am, then what I do and hopefully when I meet the next perfect guy we will mesh more comfortably then I did with the last one: I think I am ready to try again.

 

Recently inspired…

“The Beautiful thing is that healing happens and one day you can actually wake up and find that what “defined you” is just part of a long ago history that really isn’t important at all. It is easier said than done, but sometimes you’re looking so hard at a way to make it happen that you don’t realize, it just does.

You wake up and find loving yourself doesn’t need excuses, it doesn’t need validation, it isn’t something you need to earn. You were born deserving it and one day you just know that nothing anyone did to you after birth changed that fact.

Then you look around and realize this is YOUR life and every moment is a new one to start fresh and paint again what you want it to look like from here on and THAT becomes the focus of your whole life, just to be in the beautiful world that you want to live in.”

I have landed in a place in my life that there is little for me to feel inspired to share anymore.  It has become a drama free zone and like someone slipping into a pool on a warm day I am just soaking in it and feeling blessed.

I really am not painting or creating anything.  It is part of the tapes of my growing up to feel that there is something really wrong with that.  The just breathing and taking up air without contributing to the world in any way that others profit from, but strangely enough they are missing from all the moments of my life now.

I feel Gratitude.  I feel love.  I hear silence where there has never been silence before and don’t question it.  Don’t fear that it’s a fleeting gift.  I aim for being a mirror of it.

I don’t fear being a sponge.  I know who and what I am, finally.  I am soaking in what I have now.  This part of my life is no longer connected to the life I had.  It’s not even based on who I was before.

Something miraculous has happened.  I reached a point where I stopped believing I earned pain in this life: That I deserved pain.   I can almost put my finger on when it happened and I can see the whole world changed to accommodate that new belief.

When you stop the way the world is spinning and spin it in the other direction, for a moment everything stops and you’re caught in the blur as you’re still spinning.  That’s where I have been and I feel like I am IN the moment of clarity, peace and silence that is that moment before it changes direction and everything begins again.

I am moving into a selfish zone where I get something for myself out of the life I have left.  I KNOW the reason we were put on the planet was so that something existed here that could appreciate all that God has done and I do.

I don’t know if you will want to be where I am.  I don’t even know if I will wake up tomorrow and be here myself but for this moment in time Life is so beautiful.

Without any artificial enhancements of any kind I assure you, the sadness, the blackness, they are all perfectly balanced and perfectly beautiful and it’s really OK to experience the other side.

FILLERS…

My guess, when looking at this blog, is that most people would just think that I lack focus, but I think its more that my brain doesn’t stay in the same space.

In reality I tend to drift, become micro focused and then drift again.  They are always trying to put me on some kind of medication but the things they want to medicate me for, are not the things I think need fixed.  I wonder if there is medication that would fix that.

Even when I am able to write, I tend not to retain focus for very long on one thing.  Most Blogs seem to stay pretty much on the same subject and I know that is something I need to get better at but I fail miserably.

I can’t even read with focus.  Really if I keep reading one blog constantly because I am emotionally attached or for any reason really, in a short time I find it annoying that everyone else is soooo micro focused!

If they write about being depressed … they never seem to pull out of it.  If they craft it is mostly the same things over and over and over.  I want fresh … new … at least a jolt of something different now and then.

I always thought I would be a writer for a newspaper, but I wouldn’t write columns I would write fillers.  Those little bits of stuff they gather that have no timeline attached that you can put anywhere to take up space where ever you need them.  Useful but really not normally newsworthy as NEWS.

The stuff that is written for people who read from need.  They read the cereal boxes as they eat because they need to read something…it doesn’t matter what.  They consume with their brain.  That way I could hop around and chat about anything that moved me at the moment.

That’s  what I do here.

People drop in and see something about keeping on track with their exercise and diet and hit follow because they think they can come back and find more motivation here later.

Probably not any time soon folks.

Mental health is another focus that seems to come and go.  I tend to follow more of those blogs than any other.   I feel close to those who know that struggle, but for the most part I am healthier than ever and can’t churn out the constant stream of how do I work this through, anymore.

So how do I write a blog that will maintain its followers?  According to what I have read subject hopping isn’t going to build readership.  Good thing I don’t need to be paid for what I do because that is what I do best.  If you read the box of cereal as you eat, hopefully you will find a home here.

sincerely SB

The rest of the story…

Everyone who knows me knows that I have been raped, and knows very personally how damaged I have been by it.  Few know the other side, because it took a lot of digging for me to get it:  It was so that I had the answers that I needed, not for anyone else.

Now I have been sucked in to this story that I found and the wave of opinions that followed, and I think its worth the telling.

Over a decade ago I moved back to the town I was raped in.  It had been a long time since I had lived there and little was familiar anymore.  The bar where we hung out was there but repainted and under another name.

That lonely street it was on had become a business district so little else looked the same.  My daughter lived in a new apartment complex just a bit further up the street so that I had to drive right past it to see her.   The first few times I could barely drive past without being sick, but it wasn’t long till it began to be just a part of the neighborhood she lived in.

We were out together in her car one day and I had this over whelming need to go looking for where I had been raped.  I hadn’t thought about it at all in a long time but that day I was driven by the feeling it had to be done right then.

My Daughter looked at me a bit worried, but took me where I asked her to.  It was miles out that road and I had only been there that one night over a decade before.  Didn’t know if I could even find it.  Then I saw it in the distance and the knot in my stomach said that we had to turn back, that was all the further I could go.

A long time past without a thought about it, when again I felt this overwhelming need to be there.  Again I was with my Daughter.  This time it was late and we drove right up to where it was.

The business was closed and almost looked abandoned.  We got out and climbed though the fence and looked around.  I looked in a window and the bed where I was raped was still there just as it had been years before.  That seemed to be enough and I let it go.

The last time we went there I had been obsessed with thoughts all day that I had to go there and called my Daughter.  She said that she would go with me.  This time we went when the business would be open.  I wanted to see him.  To know how he was.

We walked in the door and the man at the counter was not familiar at all.  He was waiting on a customer, so I looked around the room till there was no one left but the two of us.  On the wall by the door were a bunch of pictures posted on a pin-up board and one of them was Doug.

Seeing that face was painful and I was glad when I could get a moment alone with the guy at the counter.  I asked for Doug and he said, “There is no one here by that name”.  I told him that was his picture there on the wall and he said “ohhh, yea he died a few years back just before I started working here.”

I thanked him and he went back to working and as I was leaving I had this need to have that picture.  I grabbed it off the board as I left.  I was crying as I got into the car and showed it to my Daughter.  “MOM, I can’t believe you stole that picture!”  I didn’t know why but I knew I needed it.

That night I scanned it and put it on my computer.  It brought up a whole ton of feelings I had long forgotten so I just spent the night processing them all.  The next morning I went to take the picture back and talk to the guy at the counter and see if he knew any thing more.

When I came in this time no one was there and the same man was behind the counter.   I told him what I did and apologized for taking the photo.   “I’m sure that you can keep it, it seems to mean more to you than it would to anyone here”.

I told him I needed to know what happened to him.  “He was good friends with the mechanic down the street and was married I think.”   Here is the guys card.  I’m sure he would be happy to meet a friend of Doug’s and talk to you if you wished.

This time I couldn’t let it go.  I called the number on the card, to speak to this man who knew Doug so well.  “It’s funny how you should call now”, he said, “Yesterday was his birthday”.   “He committed suicide 3 years ago.”  He gave me the number of Doug’s wife, and said if I would like to come by and talk I was welcome to do so anytime.

I hung up and called her number and gave her my name.  She knew that I had been a friend of Doug’s but she didn’t seem to know  much more about me.  She said she loved him very much but that “he seemed a haunted man”.  “It was hard to get him to leave his room, then finally one day he just ended his life and left her and her daughter to deal with the loss”.

It isn’t every guy that will carry a shit load of guilt for getting away with what he did.  I am positive that this one did.  I think HE was the driving force that kept bringing me back there.  I think he needed to work it through as well.

I know Doug didn’t just go on like nothing happened.  I wasn’t the only victim that night.  I wrote a few poems and processed the grief for a while and have pretty much left it at praying that he finally has peace.  I know that after this that I did.

Change your thoughts to change your life.

One of the effects of healing is that my world has opened up immensely.  Being wrapped in pain really keeps your focus at a pin point where it is impossible to know that there is a bigger ANYTHING then the pain you’re in.

I can see major mental shifts in my life and am a personal witness to the fact that the Universe responds to that shift.  Like the fact that the first time I knew that I would never let anyone hit me again: I didn’t have to learn how to defend myself, because it stopped being an issue.

2002 was the first time anyone snapped at me and I realized that I hadn’t done anything to cause it.  Wow.  What a concept.  It took years but that thought finally globalized into “if I am not guilty for every bad thing that’s happened to me, then I deserve good things to happen to me as well”.

The big story here is NOW THEY JUST DO.

Early on in my life I felt helpless to change anything.   Only now do I see that there are REAL effects in my life that have come from the mental changes in me.

Change your thoughts, change your life has been a life long chant for some people.  People who have made a living telling others that this was the way things work in this life and that you too can tap into it.  Can anyone just tap into it?  I finally believe WE CAN.

I am doing it and I want to scream out to those that are just behind me.  YOU CAN!  I am flailing about so you may not want to follow me but it doesn’t happen in a vacuum, so you can try some of the things that I know have worked.

You can change you focus.  Stop looking at the things that keep you down and look around.

Challenge your old ways of thinking in every way you can.   You are Blessed.  You have the internet at your finger tips!  Read as much as you can.

Seminars!  They are designed to tweak the way we’re thinking.   They can take time and money but for now at least there are still internet sites that offer them free.   Google TED talks and spend time checking out everything that interests you.

Keep track of how you’re doing.   Diary’s are great as they let you look back and see where you were and how far you have come but any kind of recording process will do it.  Use photos, graphs, charts, home movies, anything that makes sense with the goal you have, to chart your progress so that you can see it.

Find some way to be tangibly grateful for what you have.  Prayer is a wonderful way if you have a God to pray to, but anyone can give thanks directly to the things that gave up their lives, so that they could live.

There is a belief that thanking water before you drink it changes its molecular structure into something more nourishing to your body and they do have ways to see that change.

Thanking flowers for the beauty they add to your life has been shown to make measurable changes in how they grow.  There is power in your thoughts and releasing positive thoughts into your own environment will allow you to see it.

Your attention has the power to bring about what you focus on.  Keep perfecting your vision of what success looks like to you.  Add that to your newly expanded field of vision and you will get a lot closer to having it.

Everything needs attention and just the act giving something your’s does change it.   Those who have been here, help to keep me motivated in my own personal struggle to thrive:  Thank You for being one of them.

Confessions of a Grooveshark Junky…

I though “Crimson and Clover”was the most beautiful song alive.  I would lay on the floor with a speaker on each side of my head, and listen in awe as the music shifted from one side to the other.  It was one of my first experiences with STEREO sound!  Most of my records were passed down by my parents and all mono till then.  I had a “stereo”, but you couldn’t experience that sound without a stereo record!

I have one real addiction in my old age, Grooveshark.  All my music is on cassettes.  I discovered that not everything is replaceable  when I went out looking for a new one to replace the stereo from my grandfather.   It had begun to eat my tapes.  You know you can’t buy a decent cassette player anymore!

Somewhere in a plastic grocery sack, in a box, in a storage unit, in California, is my cassette collection, complete with about 20 personal recordings of my own family, that will never be played again.  Oh well.  Such is life.  It was more heartbreaking then when I discovered I could no longer buy 126 film for my camera that was literally glued to my right hand till then.

Anyway I found myself alone for the first time in my life only about 5 years ago.  I left my husband.  I had my clothes and my computer, and a tiny apartment on the second floor of a converted building that was once a flour mill.

I borrowed camping gear from my kids till I could get some furniture.  I bought two bath towels and 2 knives, forks, and spoons from the open stock at Walmart.  I cooked in the same pot that I ate out of and slept in a sleeping bag on the floor.

I had 2 camp chairs so I could have company and that was it.  My apartment echoed for the whole first month because I had to save every last penny I earned to pay off the deposit that my landlord graciously let me move in without paying.

It was then that I discovered Grooveshark.  There were several versions of it but it took me no time at all to realize that laying on my stomach on the bare wood floor for hours picking out music wasn’t working for me, so Grooveshark was it.  I am up to 10 playlists to fit my every mood now, and this is what has made me the junky that I am.

I have all my favorites from when I first discovered music in my teens on one.  I have all the country that my mother loved and those old fifty’s tunes of my fathers that I grew up with on others.  I have my workout music, and my suicidal music, dish washing music some clasical, some jazz, 80’s hits, and a whole list of odd ball stuff I have collected that I can’t put a heading on.  Pat Metheny, Alanis Morissette, Dan Hicks, and Nils Molvaer couldn’t have less in common but their all on that list!

My best friend lived right next door and often brought me coffee in the mornings.  She would sit with me and listen and talk for hours some days and we made her up a list so we could play her favorites when she was there.

Tommie was just a few years older than I, and we didn’t listen to a lot of the same stuff, but she knew music.  You could say a few lines and she could tell you what the song was, what year it came out and who did it.  When she wasn’t around I would remember a few words and have to type them into Google, so that I could add it to one of my lists.  We spent a lot of our hours together just remembering all the music we ever loved and sharing it with each other.

When I wasn’t at work, back in that empty apartment it was all I had; just me and the music.  I would lay on that sleeping bag and crank it up.  In just a few seconds I would be whisked away.  With one song I would be 11 again, laying on the diving board enjoying the sun and the calm of my Aunts pool just getting a tan.  With another I would be crying out all the pain my heart was hanging on to with long choking sobs.  With others I would be heart to heart right next to my parents, both gone for years now.

For three years I lived in that apartment and I never got used to living alone.  I hated every minute when someone else wasn’t there, and it seemed like it would never end.  The music often went all night long.  One of my first acquisitions when I started buying things were a set of headphones so that I could crank it up without disturbing Alice downstairs.

One day I just decided I couldn’t do it anymore.  Living alone wasn’t for me and I went about changing my life, yet again.  Now here I am living in Florida, over 2000 miles away from my kids, my friend and everything I knew then.

Funny thing that playlist of my best friends picks has become my favorite list now; and it always takes me right back there to the two of us having coffee and Groovesharking music together.

This one is for you Tommie!  “It’s My Life”  Heart to Heart again.

Flashbacks

It’s late on a Thursday night in 1991 when the ambulance brings me into the back entrance and they take me inside.   The sound of the door is heavy and metallic clanging shut behind us.  They show me to a small bare white room with only a sink, a toilet and a bare mattress.

I curl up on the mattress and can’t sleep the words sticking my haid wrong wrong wrong wrong head and scaring me.  stop stop stop stop malfunction lockup lockup lockup lockup lockup … long animal like screams coming from other rooms…terrify me.

He is there “please, please, please, don’t, send, a man, in here!” … I am under the sink and won’t come out and cry; He returns again and again so that is where I stay.

This and the screaming go on late into the night.  Several cycles of me sleeping intermittently between the visits where he seems as uncomfortable as I am with his presence there.  They keep tormenting us both by sending him in again and again.

Time passes and I can’t stand my teeth.  I am tormented as much by them as by the men they keep sending into my room.  They just stand inside the door.  Out, out outoutoutoutoutoutout!, I scream at him.  But they don’t move.  When I turn and face the wall quiet he finally leaves.

The next one is just a kid and looks as scared as I am and I feel sorry for him.  We just stay in our assigned places till the time has passed and he too is allowed to leave.

I scramble back to my mattress and try again to sleep.  Words words words words…the chanter guy comes back and mumbles over the top of them so that i don’t hear them any more.

It must be getting close to morning as the screaming is back.  Long wild monkey wails of grief and torment.  ”48 hour hold”.  I can do this,  but then it is the weekend and no one comes; NO ONE.

I am alone for how long;  I don’t know.  I sleep till I can sleep no more and drink water from the sink.  The lights are always on and I can’t tell the day from the night.  The screams come and go and I am left alone.

My teeth are making me crazy and no one has been here for a very long time.  It is quiet again.  I try the door and it opens.

I hadn’t seen anything when I came in.  The fear was shutting me down.  Now I look out and mine is the first door in a long hall next to the nurses station.  A small square room with windows on all sides with the one that has a pass through and a metal vented circle to speak through on my side.

A much larger room surrounds it  with lots of chairs and a TV up in the corner high up on the wall.

The floor is brown with a path of cream tiles going all around the outside of the room just one tile space from the walls.  No one is out and I think if I stay on the cream tiles it is safe.

I slip out the door and walk that safe path to the window and whisper to the nurse.  ”may I have a toothbrush please?”  She makes me repeat it and it is almost more than I can do.  The tired weighs down on me again and the need to go back to my room.

She can see that it is hard for me and steps out and presses one into my hands.  It is cheep, white, and wrapped in cellophane with a small envelope of pink powder.

Suddenly there are people moving everywhere, someone brings me a peanut butter sandwich and chocolate milk I forget to follow the path and let them lead me to a table where I can sit down to eat.

For the first time since I came I realize that I am hungry.   I have no idea how long its been since I have eaten.  I manage a thank you but other than that we don’t speak.  When I am done I ask to go back to my room.

Now there is a problem: The table is in the middle of the room.  I don’t remember leaving the white trail of tiles against the wall but am suddenly very anxious about it.  Just do it; there is no other way!

I take several big steps and get back to the wall and am breathing hard when I get there.  Now I can safely make my way around the room to the corner, turn, then to the first wall of the nurses station, turn, to the corner, turn, to the corner, turn, carefully retracing the path back to my room.

When I step inside I am unsure that this is the room I left.  Sink and toilet are in the same place but now there is a cot so that the mattress is up off the floor and there are crisp clean white sheets, a blanket and a pillow on it.

I went to the sink, wet the brush and poured the pink powder into my palm and rubbed the brush into it.  I scrubbed and scrubbed my teeth until they returned to their normal state of smoothness.

The sheets smell of bleach and it is such a comfort to slip between them that in moment I am sound asleep… but as I do I get it…They offered me nothing till I made some request.  I did something right and this was my reward.

Monday comes and the therapist has me brought to his office.  They have extended my 48 hour hold “my behavior is to bizarre, to return me to the general population”.  I cry as they take me back to my room.  It is clear they can keep me as long as I don’t conform to what they want from me.

I am assigned a psychiatrist.  He asks what medications they have given me in the past and I tell him that everyone wants to give me Lithium and that I hate it because it makes me feel drugged.  I tell him my Dr’s keep telling me its only a salt and CAN’T do that.

He says IF you need Lithium you feel nothing when you take it, but if a normal person takes Lithium they feel drugged.  Finally I feel heard.  I have found someone who listens and will work with me to fix this.

He is trying me on some medication.  I take it the first few times but don’t like it’s effects and begin to refuse to take it.  I get called back into his office and he says he will change it.

Now I am lucid in my mind but my body is stiff and robotic.  I feel the drool from the side of my mouth and can only imagine what I must look like.  I grieve for what I have become…this shell of a person that can’t function or interact with others in any tangible way.

I get it.  I feel angry and tricked.  I have a right to refuse but they can do worse.  I will do what ever he wants.  Get me off this and out of here.  I can’t be this anymore.

Once I start to co-operate I am off the locked ward and sharing a room with someone else.  My roommate tries to cut her wrist with a safety razor, I am thinking of ways to remove the blade from the plastic but say nothing.  She is an idiot.

I ask for something to draw on and am given a rather nice flip book of blank paper and some pencils.  I am beyond grateful for the gift.

Now I am required to go to group.  There are men in the group.  The first day they confront me about my behavior when I was first admitted.  I tell them I was afraid.  Of what?  I say “I don’t know”.

The groups facilitator is quiet a moment like he is thinking about that.  Then he says.  ”I believe that”.  ”I really believe that you don’t know” and he moves on to the next person.

Every day I take my drugs.  I go to meals, and to our exercise periods, and I go to group.  Other than that I lay on my bed and draw.  I think about my children and wonder what they know.

Some how I let it out that i have been raped in one of those groups.  I don’t even know when or how.  I just know that one day I am in a group with a guy who has been in them with me before and he is talking about “going down to the boulevard and picking them sweet young strawberries.”

I ask him what he means, and he says he picks up underage girls that will trade sex for drugs.  I totally lose it then and think I will rip his hair out, I am screaming as they pull me from the room and He is saying “I ain’t the one who raped you bitch! “

That night I am dreaming that I am sitting on my bed and there are lots of pills on the night table.   I am sliding them off and taking them one at a time saying “I don’t want to go home”.  ”I don’t want to go home”, and taking another and another.

They don’t make me go to group anymore.

I have been in almost 2 months when I am called in for a long conference with the psychiatrist who has been prescribing my drugs.  He tells me they are thinking of letting me go home and I break down and cry.

He asks about the side effects of the drugs they have been giving me lately and I tell him that I don’t notice them anymore.  I feel good.  In fact that this is the first time anyone has given me anything that seemed like it really helped.  They give me one months supply of med’s and release me to go home.

For the first three days I am curled up on the couch when I am not asleep I pretend that I am so that I don’t have to deal with anyone, till I realize that no one will push me.  I can do what I can and rest when I must.

Finally I begin to do what I used to do.  I wake up and clean and help with homework and we learn what it is to be a family again.  In a short time I go back to work.  At first its clear they are watching me but before long they forget to do so and everything is normal again.

I have my life back and that is more than I ever hoped for just 2 short months ago.

“It’s the job that’s never started…

as takes longest to finish”.  JRR Tolkien   Yesterday I started again.  Today I got up and worked out on my Total Gym.  Both times I could feel my body responding in positive ways.

I feel the determination build for me getting back to being healthy, but shortly after the first few days of built up determination pass find myself without the motivation I need to continue to fight my own unwillingness to do it anymore.

I though the magic was in my Total Gym.  It’s here, its set up and when I get on it, my body feels challenged. The memory of what I do is still there.  My workouts still feel smooth and I move through it without much thought, but then a morning comes where I just don’t get on it, and its done.

I had no end goal before.  I wanted my body strong and capable and healthy.  The last time my determination then was caused by the fact that I saw people my age loosing their ability to get around and giving in to it, and I had a limp.

I let myself get close to 250 lbs and my body wouldn’t carry that weight anymore.  I had problems climbing even just a few steps, having to pull with my arms as well to navigate them.  I had to fight back.

Several times I have hit that place, but my Mother has been there pushing me.  This was the first time I did it all on my own.  I saw myself losing my ability to walk and fought back, but I am not there now.

I am not at the fitness level I was when I got here but there are no real limitations to what I feel like I can do.  The older I get the more I have to work to keep my weight at a level that feels healthy.

I am not my size.  I only compete with myself.  The paint brush is in my hand, I have to create with it or this will be just another wasted canvas.  Normally when I start working out the pounds drop off but once I turned 50 that changed.  When I fought my way back the last time it was months before I lost a size: I felt physically better and more capable just the same.

How did I get there before?  I just did it.  I knew what I wanted and every day I started toward that goal again.  Some days I couldn’t do it, but they got fewer and fewer as time went on till the times I didn’t do it were rare occurrences, and I WAS DOING IT.

Just DO IT.  That is what it means.  Don’t think about doing it.  Jump in and start and do it till its done.  No more excuses.  No more depression.  No more thinking it over.  I KNOW it’s really what I want.  Its time to just do it, again.

Trip to do list.

“There has been a growing amount of fear for my taking this trip building within my family.  There are a few that have tried to talk me out of it but they fall further from that goal then the ones who try to be supportive but show the strain of the stress of their fear.

My Granddaughter is one of those.  She is building anxiety that she will never see me again, to the point that at School her teacher sat her down and helped her figure out just how long it will take me to get across the country by bike.

She is only 10 and she loves me with an unfailing heart like no one else on this planet.  I can’t ignore her fears, so tomorrow I leave to fly back to Oregon.  It ate my budget but I am placing myself and my dreams in Gods hands and doing what I need to do for this child.”

If your here often you know that was months ago.   My going back to Oregon was a necessary thing but nothing went as I planned.  With-in 3 days I was ill and stayed ill for most of the first month.   My croupy cough only ended when I came back to Florida.

Oregon has felt like home since the first day my feet touched that soil.  Somehow over the last 2 years that changed.   I spent time with those I love.  That was why I went and that’s what I did, but I felt stuck in a waiting game where my life would not restart till I left.

I am here now and getting my land legs back.  I am home.  Its time to get my butt back to work and do something with the life I have been given.  This is my home as well and I have missed it.  It’s nice to be back.

I’m up early…

and sitting by the window watching the fog lift on our back yard.  As I lay in bed for over an hour this morning going over what the day would bring, I was looking for that first glimpse of light that would signal it had arrived.  Finally, tired of waiting got up to find that it was here but obstructed by the haze.

I came to WordPress looking to make a separate life for myself from the world that I find myself in and the move was a good one.  I find I don’t just come here to write but to read and it’s become a place of inspiration and encouragement.  I have several blogs that I follow now and add more daily.   If you weed carefully through the sites that are clearly here for self promotion you find blooms of extraordinary value.

I forget sometimes that this identity crisis that I am going through is pretty normal for people my age, and way past expected for what I just did!   I have ended a long term relationship; my children have all moved on; I have moved clear across the country leaving loved ones, pets, and all my possessions behind; I am going through “the change” and I don’t have a job!

Top that off with the fact that I shaved my head and for so long didn’t recognize the person that I saw in the mirror and it’s no wonder at all that I felt a bit crazy!  I get wrapped up in the fact that my own stuff compounds it, but boy oh boy is this normal!

Daily exercise was something that took me years to incorporate into my life and I just seemed to let go of it when I got here.  I thought picking it back up when I was ready would be easy as I have so much time now to do it, but it has turned into more of a challenge then I thought.

It was kind of funny to experience that first day as it was several days coming, and just to finally get to it, I was having to yell at myself every minute like I was a small child not wanting to get ready for school.  “I don’t care that you don’t want to … YOU HAVE TO… just DO IT!”   The second day was easier and today before my eyes even opened I was feeling around for my ball to work out with.

I am still only doing a few exercises every morning but I know myself well enough to know I will do more and more as I feel my body getting stronger.  I do love working out.  I am surprised that I have to let my body discover that again and again.   Someday every part of me will know this and I won’t have to try so hard to keep at it.

Sometimes we think we need a closet full of shoes…when just one boot will do.

Speaking of time… I have a huge awareness of the fact that I have so much of it that I can really experience so many things that I have missed since I was a child.  Once I had children of my own it was easy to feel overwhelmed by all that had to be done each day, and not take a moment to really feel and enjoy just being alive.

I lived next to a church steeple once and it was the only clock I had at the time.  I loved hearing it chime.  While I was walking down town yesterday it turned 2 o’clock.  I was in the very center of town and could hear several Church clocks chiming at once.  I can’t tell you how blessed I felt just sitting there experiencing that moment.  I experienced total heartfelt joy just existing in that point and time.

Writing what I am grateful for was also on my to do list, and today that was mine.

Virtual Dating and other realities.

There are some realities about caring for a family member that having a computer has made so much easier.  Shopping on line is one of them.  I have even shopped for a mate on line and it does have some advantages.

When your housebound it also gives you another option, virtual dating.  I was introduced to this option by someone from OKCupid who took me to Secondlife for virtual dating experiences.  I am over 50 years old and I am sure younger people have no problem with this, but for me this was a problem.

To start with navigation has to be learned.  I love my computer for many things but I have not spent much time playing RPG’s on it.  I was quickly able to figure things out well enough to walk from one point to another.  It took me longer to follow when someone could virtually pop from one place to another, and keeping them from getting bored while I fumbled around with the controls was even harder than learning navigation.

The first thing you do is make an Avatar or a virtual representation of yourself to use in your ‘Secondlife’ account.  Remember when your Mother told you that you could be anything you wanted to be?  Well, here you really can.  You can be young, thin, tall, blond, and you can make this virtual space as much your life as any you currently live.  You can choose a career, design your own stuff, even run a virtual business.

Shock and dismay here but you can even use REAL money to by virtual stuff.  I can see this being a generational issue but I am doing non virtual stuff to earn that money and spending it on Virtually NOTHING is still beyond my comprehension.

We had a few dates on Secondlife but not successfully.  While these times did get to be enjoyable much of my time not wrapped in this new world of possibilities was spent deciding just how much I was willing to let my Secondlife take up of my first one.

I put an end to the virtual dating a short time after trying it.  I have been around a while and have a history of making choices that put me virtually as much as possible in the world that I believe I am living.  I have refused to be medicated long-term for anything, and don’t often drink or use drugs as I feel doing so takes away from my ability to experience this existence.

I also wanted to be in a relationship with another human being in such a way that I could feel that I knew them.  I believe; that the only point of this life is to experience living it, that when I look into someones eyes I can know what they are feeling,   that we can actually share our true character with another human being, and that they are able to share theirs with us.  How would either of us know if anything that we were sharing in that virtual world had any validity at all?  If I couldn’t then what was the point?

My brother likes video games.  He has one game that virtually puts you behind the wheel of what ever car you want to drive on almost any racetrack in the world.  It is so perfect in its re-creation that there is reflection from the signage in the front end of the car as you go around the track.  In another game he rides a horse through the old west.  I have been on a horse; what you see on the screen is incredibly true to that experience!

We are blessed to live in an age of infinite possibilities.  It may be a true measure of my age in how resistant I have become to embracing all of them, but I have spent more than a little time lately thinking how much it will influence my ability to make what I consider “real” connections with people in the future, when so many others do.

Real Beauty…

As a woman we are constantly getting the message that we are not valuable without beauty.  We are sure that age, weight, moles, freckles, scars and wrinkles make us ugly.  That who we are and what we do with out lives isn’t as important as how we look.

Dove has a Real Beauty campaign meant to show that we often see ourselves less positively then others view us but it created a backlash by those who say that is only if you happen to adhere to what society has always said is beautiful, because they basically chose young pretty thin woman to do the study with!

What do you think about the Dove Campaign?  Do you think that the critics are right?

I would love to study this further.  This is fascinating to me.  I want to do a much larger study.  Would the people describing the participants that were being drawn be just as positive and forgiving of flaws if the people being drawn didn’t fit that profile?

Do you think if the participants were all fat that the outcome would have been the same?  Would it change if the participants that were drawn were all over 70?  Or Men?

How would it change things if the people describing the person being drawn were from different cultures or economic backgrounds?   Would we get a different outcome?

In the middle of doing …

and not had time nor energy to post.  I’m tired but dang its a good tired.  It is wonderful to make progress and to see something your working for begin to take shape.  I don’t want to slow up on the doing yet but as soon as I do will take stock and let you know where everything stands.  

My dreams are showing promise and sucking me into their draft!  For now all I can say is WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Sometimes all it takes…

is a nudge from a good friend.  She showed up and kidnapped me this morning and we mapped out a 30 mile route.  We road our bikes for a while and walked it off, then enjoyed the peace of the front porch.  It was a great way to start the day and get me back on track.  Thank You Mary.  Will see you again soon!

Love, living and death…

I have spent my life caring for people who were at the end of theirs.  I have held their hand while they were passing and once even held them in my arms as the life left their body.  Once you have actually witnessed it, there really isn’t a question; you know that they are just not in that body anymore.  It’s only a wax shell.  For me death isn’t frightening, It isn’t beautiful, it just is.

When your dealing with death, People you don’t even know think that it’s their job to pass on their perspective of the meaning of life and what you should be doing with your’s.  This last week we have kind of lost our sense of humor.   I have refused to live medicated, but I do know what works for me, and going to church isn’t it.

I don’t know how it will be when it comes my time to stare death in the face, but I do know how hard it is watching those I love do it.  I sometimes wonder why I chose a life doing it.

Part of what allows me to go on doing it is my belief system. One of the things that I KNOW is true, is that if you change your beliefs, you change your life.  When it comes to death and dying I cling with teeth to the ones I have.  A few things I have experienced have influenced those beliefs.

Not the least of which is my beloved Aunt. When She Lost the love her life, She went right on having coffee with her every morning.  She would pour them both a cup; set them on the table by the chairs they always sat in, and talk to her about her life.

It was not long after her death that Bunny started finding hearts in the cup.  Every day she would make the coffee and day after day there would be the heart.  My aunt took tons of pictures and showed them to everyone who would listen.

I myself witnessed those hearts; some were clear, strong, and boldly centered and others were lacy around the edges or seem to curl sweetly around the side, but there were clearly recognizable hearts in those cups.

She was going to write a book and publish all those shots so people would know that love lives on even after you lose someone, and I truly believe it does.

When Bunny herself passed, She had been told she had cancer and only had a short time to live so I had been going up every day I had off to see her.  That last day as I drove into Portland it was covered over in a rainbows.

I had never seen more than two in the sky in all my life, but on this day they were everywhere;  Hundreds of them!  One came arching down from the sky and touched the front of my car!  I was so excited thinking that I would be blessed with good fortune and rushed to tell her what I had seen but she was gone.

Every fiber of my being believes it was her way of kissing me goodbye.  I think of her often and when I do I wrap my arms around her and give her a big squeeze and feel loved, just as I always did when she shared this earth with me.

I got the biggest complement of my whole life last night. “you are the only person I know that doesn’t add stress to my life.”   Wow, I couldn’t have thought of a better goal if I spent months trying.

I am no longer the seeker of truth that I was then.  To quote billy…”if you get the answer you’re looking for, hang up”.   For me this conversation is over.

I have been stuck

in what I thought was a place of nothing; no pain or feeling or need.  I have been angry at myself feeling it was just total lack of motivation.  A pitiful excuse of a life wasted.  I keep finding myself crying and feeling how stupid it is; I AM, for doing it.  I have no reason to be sad. I quip that we are all dying, everybody dies.

Part of me feels that it is a gift.  Death puts an end to this terminal pain we are sentenced to at birth.  I try to make myself stop typing her name.  Stop making everything in my life revolve around her.  She is gone!  It is done, over, I can move on: I can’t.

Val used to hate how people would make those who died into saints.  It is OK to speak ill of the dead, she would say. “If they were an asshole in life they are no better than what they were because they are dead.”  When I speak of her I can feel me doing that.  Sticking her up on that pedestal that she hated.  She was human and she was flawed, and I miss her.

There were a few times she told me she didn’t want me to stay.  She said I know you did this for others and it was OK, but they weren’t me.  “This will hurt too much, You should go”.  You don’t know me, I would tell her, I don’t think of death the way you all do.  I will be fine.

I feel guilty because my family wants me back.  I have truly missed them.  I honestly grieve the time I have missed with that precious new baby girl, and the equally beloved older grandchildren as well.

I feel guilty for every day of progress I haven’t made.  For as many days as God has granted me that I have wasted.  For all the beautiful moments and gifts that I refuse to notice while I am stuck here depressed.

I have felt that guilt weighing me down just adding to the pain I already carry and yet deny.

Val was right it is different.  The pain I felt when I lost my Aunt, Father, and Mother to Cancer, was different, then the pain I feel for her.  I miss her in a much more personal way. It is major denial to say she isn’t gone from my life because she is still in my heart.  There is nothing new she can give me from there.

It doesn’t seem right that I haven’t wanted to live the life God gave me and I am still here:  Yet she loved living and she is gone.  I need her to tell me its OK to move forward without her, that she won’t feel that I loved her less if I do.

Val loved life.  She was never like me.  Cancer robbed her of years that she wanted to spend with her children.  She still had things she wanted to do and see.

Cancer even robbed her of so much of the enjoyment she should have had of the years Chemo gave her.  It was an endurance contest and in the end it beat her.  She was tired and ready to let go.

I thought I was at peace with her passing.  That I shouldn’t feel pain.  This place of denial is the nothing that I have been stuck in.  I have refused to just feel the loss and pain.   I have feared posting anything like this as I really didn’t want to add anything to the pain of others but I realize now that it wouldn’t.

Pain expressed isn’t added to the pain in the world, it was already there.  If others read this and feel pain, it is only pain they already have and have found no way to express either.  Maybe it isn’t a horrible thing if we cry.  Maybe it isn’t a horrible thing if I do nothing for a while and grieve.  Letting it hurt may be the only way I have of letting go.   Perhaps it honors us both that I should do so.

STILL STUCK…

I hate being in this place of not doing!  I have a to do list a mile long and when I chip one thing off it that is a good day anymore.  I don’t paint or craft or clean or do any productive thing.  Before I was feeling lousy because I didn’t exercise.  Now bathing and brushing my teeth are on the list of things I can’t make myself do.

Hours and hours of wasted nothing.  The things I can’t seem to do are things that would help pull me out of this.  Is this grief?  Maybe if I could label it … and understand I could work it through.  Instead it feels like I am just frozen unable to move forward.  I hate this and I hate me for doing it.  I am useless, of no value to anyone, wasting what is precious and irretrievable.  I know better.  I KNOW BETTER.  Do Better!  Do something even if its wrong!

My own bucket list.

 

Do 54 new things before my next birthday.  Yesterday Alex taught me to make a wallet from duck tape and I made 2 for gifts.  Thank you Alex.  I have lamented for a while that I had nothing personal on my list of things I make, for the men in my life.  I love this!

Today I realized that I can’t really claim that as a new thing as Khi really did show me how to do them over 2 years ago, but I just never finished the one I started there, and quickly forgot all about them.

This isn’t going to be easy.  I am 54.  I have done a lot.  OK…This is the first time I have finished a duck tape wallet.  I am putting it on the done list anyway.

I have been wrapping myself in depression…

curled in a ball unable to do even the simplest things that I KNOW pull me out.  I have been here so many times before that I knew this was coming!  I tried not to predict its path.  I knew what I needed and because I felt what was best for me was bad for others and I waited till I am stuck in the mist of it.   I have been here before.

I keep trying to grab onto the positive.  Keep looking forward.  Keep holding on to some thread of a dream that might draw me back into this life.

This last week I have done not one good thing!  NOTHING!  I have to work to keep the pain of just that from overwhelming me.  I am fighting back the fear that says I am nothing… just like my Aunt and my Father used to say, “You are trash like your mother”,  “You will never be anything, you will never have anything.” This morning I was thinking “All this crap swimming around in my head!” and you know what that got me???

Dory!  God knows that I have been beaten with HIS Bible so he speaks to me in the silliest things.  He sent me Dory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBtc254NIMc

I watch that stupid video and know God is speaking to me and as the tears are flowing I feel not so alone anymore.  Not so afraid to move forward with faith and watch what HE can do with what others have discarded!

I am not an artist; I am not beautiful, or creative, or strong, and I don’t feel capable of big things, but God knows I need to be.  God YOU make wonderful things!  Make something of ME!  Please don’t leave me this pile of trash that so many see so clearly!  I know that’s why you brought me here to be with Val.

Val never preached.  She never judged.  She never told me of her faith but she lived it every day.  She isn’t the only one.  Why Carla?  Why would you send me Carla to lift me up and tell me of your love when I abandoned her child, my Grandchild, and made a life without them?

I see them contrasted with the Christians in my life and I see, really see, that the hurt that robbed me of being able to wrap myself in the label, hasn’t robbed me of YOUR love.

Today I am Grateful.  I will swim, even though I am afraid; even though I feel wrapped in darkness without any sense of direction or peace, even though I don’t feel like I have the strength to move forward anymore.  I will just keep moving, because I know that is what your telling me to do.

I am following YOU.

My new friend…

is old like me, and yet the time I spend with her is treasured beyond words.  She is green and less than beautiful and blissfully all mine!

I jumped on her yesterday and road a while and felt that instant happy that always hit me as a kid.  There is nothing like a bike!  You can get around much faster than walking, allowing that I can actually GO places that my feet would have never taken me.

Several times in my life I used a bike as my main mode of transportation and often felt sorry for people who drove in cars.  I always got everywhere I needed to go feeling happy and challenged and alive.  I was part of everything around me and not closed off and isolated.

I have already made riding dates and can’t wait to get some armadillo tires for my bike so that I can feel unafraid to ride everywhere I need to go.   Actually that list of bike accessories is growing and I have decided that its somewhat like buying a Barbie.  There is no end to the buying possibilities once that first purchase has been made.

In order to make this purchase I spent hours surfing the web for information and am finding stuff too good not to pass on.   This is a video on the proper way to lock your bike.

I use public transportation and sadly have encountered pieces of bike still attached to the pole it was locked to more times than I can count.   Unfortunately even putting a pad lock on it doesn’t mean you will come back to find your friend is still there waiting.  If you love your bike as I do mine, you will want to feel as secure as possible when leaving it.

I am off to spend time with my new friend, hope to see you soon.

Sincerely, SB

One size does not fit all!

I was blessed this week to be able to work and have earned enough that I thought I could find a semi decent bike to ride, so I spent yesterday determined to secure one.  Ended up coming home with Birthday cards and my next canvas, to make me feel better about not finding what I was looking for.

I searched the internet and then researched the ones that I found and since so much driving was involved, just picked those that seemed the most promising.  I managed to spend enough time lost to build up my determination to a frenzied level only to have it matched by the amount of depression I felt when I couldn’t possibly make what I had found work for me.

I don’t really get it!  The one thing that was pretty dependable about our childhood was every couple of years we got a new bicycle.  No one ever took us with and yet every time I just jumped on it and rode away.  They were all perfect!  I have borrowed other people’s bikes, and never found one that just felt really wrong and yet that’s all I found yesterday.  Bikes that were very wrong for my needs and abilities at this time.

Learning what doesn’t work is also good, even when it doesn’t feel so at the time.  I know now that bikes, like shoes really need to fit well if your going to put any miles on them.  To buy the right one I will need to go somewhere that I can try several that seem to fit my budget.  If I need to get a better deal I can shop on-line but ONLY after I have found the one I really want.

I do like the idea of buying used though.  Like clothing, you get to see how it stood up to the abuse the first person gave it.  You can’t really tell how good things will hold up with that new shine on them.  With all the miles I need to put on it, that will be the most important part of the fit.

There was a girl…

with a pretty little curl right in the middle of her forehead, when she was good she was very very good, and when she was bad she was horrid!

I woke up this morning realizing that I had been really bad yesterday, horrible, awful, bad.  I didn’t work out thinking I would do it later and instead I ran off to meet the guy who will mentor me in this bike trip.

We had some very strong coffee and I really enjoyed our time together.  It was really good to get a chance to know him.  We have kindred spirits.

I gave him a gift of banana bread and he gave me a cookie, which I popped into my mouth immediately before he could suggest that I start with only half.  His gift was more special then mine.

By the time I got home I was laughing my behind off.  Then I was wishing I had stayed and spent some personal time with him.  After that I started eating everything in the house.  Every crappy cream filled, sugary, salty no no thing in the house was on the list.

When I realized that single handedly I had eaten a whole bag of chips, (eeek! all that salt!) I made myself take a nap to quit!  7 hours later I woke up and it was dark.  I wasted that day!  I wanted to get up and make amends for it by jumping back into working out and behaving, and yet I was really NOT wanting to.  My body was just not into that idea.

Finally this morning I put on the music and made myself move and I was really feeling how hard it was to push myself to do it.  I am getting pain in some mussels like my abs which I am usually very unaware of.  After my 40 minutes, I felt pretty happy with myself.

Then I took my BP and went to put it down, and actually counted it out and realized that I had SKIPPED 3 DAYS, before I started working out again.  No wonder my body put up such a fuss!  Now I am recommitted to doing this everyday and back to my healthier way of eating…Oatmeal anyone???